Urban Visuals » lighting control

Science World Consumption Exhibit

Nathan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:46:30 +0000

As the centerpiece for the recently remodelled electricity exhibit, the Consumption Game that we built for Science world commands attention. The goal of the game is to save electricity by turning off appliances as they display on the screens. It’s a race against time as players run around the exhibit, hitting the buttons below each display to deactivate the appliance. Meanwhile the LED tube displays remaining electricity, and the screens on the central column display remaining electricity and elapsed time.

This exhibit blends standard hands on game play with a digital component that allows for the game to be adjusted and updated with simple software changes. The software and media driven interface will allow us the ability to create a completely different game in the future, with minimal hardware changes.

The game was written using the Processing framework for Java. The exhibit uses a number of custom interface elements, including 14 Digitalview media players controlled by RS-232, 15 practically indestructible buttons to start the game and “turn off” appliances, and a custom acrylic LED column with 5 channels of RGB LEDs, all controlled by a Mac mini. Additionally, the unit can re controlled remotely and all system variables and timers can be configured over a web interface.

2010 Olympic Rings

Nathan — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:03:41 +0000

The 40 metre wide Olympic Rings in Vancouver during the 2010 winter Olympics were seen by millions of viewers as a backdrop to the accredited television media.

Urban Visuals was commissioned to create a number of animated sequences to play on the rings during special events and when winning medals were achieved by Canadian athletes.

We used Processing to create the animated sequences and to output them in the proprietary xml format the that lights required.

Watch the official unveiling of the rings, presented by the Premier of BC below:

Benny Benassi and Armin van Buuren

Nathan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:54:35 +0000

Urban Visuals’ latest production at the Vancouver Convention Centre was a big hit. Blueprint Events brought Benny Benassi and Armin van Buuren for a double header DJ show, and we provided Stage Design and visual production for the event.

We were so busy with the show that we didn’t get a chance to document, but we found these clips from a happy attendee.

Armin van Buuren

Benny Benassi

A long shot of the show.

As the first concert to be hosted at the Convention Centre, we had to be sure everything went smoothly and according to plan. The ten video projectors were driven all driven by Modul8 on one Mac Pro and three Macbook Pros. On the LED side, we had 600 nodes of Colorkinetics iflex and 14 CK Colorblaze units all driven by Madrix.

Here are some more photos:

Bespoke lighting control

konstantinos — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:23:12 +0000

For each of our installations we create a custom control interface for the venue. This allows for a more user friendly and site specific approach, something that is created specifically for the people that use the system. With this approach the possibilities with respect to what the interface can be are endless. Sometimes are more raw literal interface is more practical, where the light patterns, colour and animation are clearly shown (above left) or an interface that refers to the physical design elements where the lights are imbedded (above right).