“Cinimod believes that human experience is the starting point and this is the inspiration for their expansive and at times strange repertoire of technologies and techniques which they use to deliver visually stunning, immersive and interactive installations.

Cinimod director Dominic Harris is obsessive about lighting, colour, form and interaction and seeks inspiration from the nature, industries and conversations around him.  The DJ GOD project is itself an inspiration in progress and here it is personified as as a conversation spanning several other of their projects.”

This was first published in the August/September 2010 issue of Mondo*Arc.

At this awards event, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology was used to identify visitors on the two ‘networking pods’ during the evening’s proceedings. The tags use radio signals to send their identity to antenna receivers. Projections then highlight guests’ key professional characteristics.

The interactive projections displayed the projects of nearby shortlisted visitors.  As they moved closer to the centre of the ‘pod’, their name rose higher on the list.  Once a visitor was determined to be closest to the centre of the pod their project details and credentials appeared on the panoramic projection screens.

The Awards were the first event that combined this technology to create a uniquely ‘connected’ environment.  The underlying system is a continuing work-in-progress that Cinimod seek to further develop for future art installations and events.  The tracking badges themselves already incorporate accelerometer sensors which can be used to gain further interesting insight into the user’s behaviour.

Cinimod Studio collaborated with Audialsense to create a unique interactive sound to complement the visual projections.  With a series of loudspeakers located around the site, special antenna receivers identified the eventual winners as they moved through the space. These ‘special’ guests then ‘distorted’ the background beats to give everyone else at the awards event audio clues as to the winners’ identities – even before they themselves knew who had won.

Project credits:

RFID interactive video projection system: Cinimod Studio

Lighting Design: Cinimod Studio

Interactive Audio System: Audialsense

Bespoke RFID electronics design and production:  White Wing Logic

Related:

This RFID projection system represents the second time that Cinimod Studio has created a unique interactive system for the Restaurant And Bar Design Awards – the first was the striking Exploded Globe over Hoxton Square in 2008.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology will be employed to identify visitors in certain key spots during the evenings proceedings. The tags, which use radio signals to seamlessly send their identity to antenna receivers, are more commonly used in industrial settings. The Restaurant and Bar Design Awards 2010 will be the first awards event that combines this technology to create a uniquely ‘connected’ environment that will actively promote positive business social networking.

The event takes place on 22 June 2010.  A full project description will appear on this website shortly after.

While traditional chandeliers are static objects, the Light Symphony is designed to engage with the public and become an active and animated element within the space. It is comprised of 240 light tubes suspended in space to create a falling volume of red, gold and white light. The overall height is 15 metres, and the scale of the piece feels both natural and appropriate to the cavernous atrium where it is located.

The real magic comes from when members of the public become the ‘conductors’ of the Light Symphony. Standing at a special plinth that is reminiscent of an artist’s easel, the user can orchestrate complex colour movements throughout the Light Symphony by using his hands and arms across a highly innovative LED touch panel. The response is immediate, and the effect clear, fluid and rewarding.

Light Symphony was produced in the UK and installed with the assistance of a local production company. All elements were designed and fabricated bespoke for the project, and a 4-strong Cinimod team were on site for 10 days.

Cinimod Studio’s approach to the project serves as another example of the design teams ambition to deliver projects of beauty and innovative design where the focus on in which the highly complex and technical electronics and control systems are presented in a highly intuitive and natural manner.

We are still preparing our own video edits, but in the meantime some clips can be found on our:  Interview Film,  Making Of Film.

Project Details:

Client:  Sobranie London, Moscow.

Overall Design, including lighting, mechanical and interaction design: Cinimod Studio

Electrical Design: White Wing Logic (London)

On-Site Production team and coordination:  Zeppelin Productions (Moscow)

In the main basement area ripples of light swirl around the club, pulsing hypnotically to the music, and revealing shards of colour within the timber slatted walls.

The Cinimod lighting scheme extends to all areas of the club, including the upstairs bar where warm white light edge lights dramatic panoramic landscape prints. Copper mirror ball pendants were deployed over the main bar counter, providing further warmth to the interior.

Key to the overall design is the integrated sound-to-light control system that provides a gently shifting lighting palette throughout the day and changing to a more dynamic content by night.

The project serves as another example of Cinimod Studio’s versatile approach to lighting design, and the results that can be achieved by making key innovative decisions in the design process.

Due to the fast project turnarounds that Cinimod Studio is often obligated to meet, we prefer to fabricate bespoke parts (including physical structures, electrical control hardware and lighting components) directly in the UK where we can readily monitor their build process. The completed sections of each project are then shipped to their final destination where a Cinimod team orchestrates the final build.

Apart from the thrill of being in awesome industrial spaces, the real reason for employing these strange environments is that we can test our meticulously planned production sequences prior to their final performance or installation. We attribute Cinimod’s track record of perfect project delivery of daring projects to our obsession with conducting these building tests.

An ideal pre-build space is one that has a copious volume of space, tall ceilings with either winches or overhead gantry cranes, a reliable electrical supply, and close proximity to some form of civilisation where last minute hardware and electrical components can be obtained if necessary. Every Cinimod Studio project is run by a dedicated design project manager who is responsible for assembling and coordinating with a local work force. With many of our projects occurring in foreign countries we also ensure that we have local interpreters and runners at our disposal.

No location is ever the same, and in the three examples below we will look at locations in Poland, Brazil and Russia. Each had it’s own idiosyncrasies to contend with, and issues such as daily security clearance requirements sometimes can be quite a tedious but inevitable frustration to deal with. However, the rewarding confidence gained from these exercises always proves the Area 51 stage to be worthwhile.

UFO (maiden flight): Gdansk, Poland

The UFO project with Peter Coffin remains even to today the most daring, audacious and crazy project that Cinimod Studio have undertaken. The whole structure and electrical systems were fabricated in England and then delivered by ground transport to Gdansk. The location selected for the final assembly and testing was a cavernous old hangar within the old Gdansk shipyard. Originally built by Nazis in World War II for the production of U-Boats, it turned out that the UFO was destined to be the final project build there before the building was to be demolished.

The building had an overhead gantry crane which came in extremely useful during the assembly process. From this we were able to lift the UFO structure and, with the engine and lighting system running, we were able to rock the UFO to test for power cut-out under extreme movements.

Visually this old hangar was somewhat reminiscent of a cross between an “X-Files” set and an abandoned “Area 51″ building. Creepy ambient sounds echoed around the space, and at night the lighting had a distinctly green glow to them. Have a look at the photographs and you can see why this was an appropriate place to build and test the UFO!

UFO (second flight): Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

The second flight of the UFO was to be in Rio De Janeiro. Working closely with the artist Peter Coffin, we developed an upgraded lighting system for the UFO that saw the addition of 80 beacon lights. These were the lighting fixtures we had first developed for our “Beacon” project, although they underwent another round of electrical and physical engineering in order to certify them for flight.

Our production location was a private airport in Rio. For a week we took possession of a modern helicopter hangar. It was nice to be in a modern building for a change with good facilities, although there was still the omnipresent feeling of eerie security as we were in a secure facility patrolled by armed guards.

The build process went without a hitch, and we made good use of the various airport facilities such a re-fuelling trucks, mobile cranes and tow trucks. Rather handy too was that being at the airport we were able to conduct a number of test flights of the UFO, including flights by daylight where we could clearly observe the aeronautical performance of our amazing flying craft.

Light Symphony: Moscow, Russia.

The Light Symphony for Sobranie London was our largest (by vertical height) project to date. Although we had designed and fabricated all components in advance in England, it wasn’t until the pre-build venue at Moscow that we finally saw all the components come together. Using a giant movie sound stage as our workshop, the full structure was assembled over 2 days.

Although we ended up running out of vertical height in the space due to rigging point constraints, we were nonetheless able to validate our electrical and mechanical design as suitable for installation in the permanent venue. Once again this project proved the value and importance of a highly coordinated pre-build and testing. And true to the building’s original purpose, it provided a beautiful and dramatic backdrop for photography and video!

LED has come a long way — today, it’s the technology behind some of the most experimental and innovative building lighting schemes. Cinimod Studio’s Dominic Harris looks at some of the most exciting ways it’s been used across the leisure sector.

note: The following article is adapted from an essay that Cinimod Studio director Dominic Harris wrote for “Leisure Management Magazine”. It was first published in print September 2009 . A web version of the original article can be found online.

The time for LEDs is now

In the past decade lighting technologies have developed at a phenomenal pace. Early adopters were perhaps lured by some misleading promises on fixture longevity and brightness. The LED-based light fixtures were temperamental, and there were only a limited number of off-the-shelf control systems that could be used to control the lights.

However, in the past couple years the situation has changed dramatically. LED technologies have matured to have both proven reliability and longevity, and are also much easier to install and control. With the current generation of fixtures from the big suppliers one can now be confident that equipment specified and installed today will not appear ‘primitive’ or even worse, ‘obsolete’, in the years to come. Both the lighting designer and the end client can be confident that their respective designs and investments of today will still look good for many years to come. LED technology has reached a great milestone in the last couple years, and now is the time to adopt it with confidence in the main stream.

The Digital Media Facade: A Responsibility for Content

When film director Ridley Scott visualised the future in his seminal film “Bladerunner”, we were presented with advertising-laden building facades that dominated the city skyline. Filmed in 1982 the technology illustrated in these large scale video billboards did not exist yet, but turned out to depict large scale media facades installations that would become a reality far sooner than the 2019 setting of the film.

I have for years been a vocal advocate that the facades of buildings should be treated as both architectural and digital surfaces on the condition that the media content not be used solely for digital advertising. Some advertising and corporate branding colours are fine, but the focus should be on the beauty and added visual value a media facade can bring to the building.

Operating as both an architect and a lighting designer I believe that we can successfully marry digital content with architecture. The resulting media facades should be designed to be complimentary to the building itself and to the surroundings. As anyone who has visited Hong Kong will know, simply putting lots of colour changing LEDs on a building can end up being to the detriment of the visual landscape. In Hong Kong these large scale lighting systems have been installed on buildings with seemingly little thought as to what the visual content is. Skyscrapers have been left with what I assume to be the default “rainbow” test pattern running rather than showing any curatorial or contextual interests. This kind of neglect of lighting content should be avoided at all cost.

The Spectacle

In the mid 1990’s LED lights began to be used to create large scale media surfaces. These were initially found deployed in high profile spots such at Times Square in New York, and also at major touring concerts in the entertainment industry, including U2’s memorable “Popmart” tour in 1997, created by London designer Mark Fisher. Today LEDs can be found almost everywhere, embedded within buildings, chandeliers, cars, etc.

My own company, Cinimod Studio, is currently involved in a number of architectural and art lighting consultancy for clients looking to create unique digital lighting installations and media facades. A common thread to our work is the belief that architecture and lighting design should be considered jointly as an integrated design element in order to reap the maximum benefit and visual impact. Two of our recent projects, the Snog Frozen Yogurt Stores and the UFO for artist Peter Coffin, serve as examples of the innovative use of LEDs to create highly visual lighting installations that provide a memorable experience to the customer, viewer or spectator.

At the Snog frozen yogurt store in London’s Soho, a corner site has become a new landmark within the neighbourhood, known in large part for the “bubbling ceiling”. This lighting feature is comprised of 700 glass globes of very bright and controllable coloured light, which together create a volumetric swirling of colour within the shop. From my perspective as the designer, and also from Snog’s perspective as the client, what is perhaps most rewarding about the whole lighting feature is the response it generates from the general public. Customers and passersby continuously stop to take photographs and videos of the store, generating a never ending supply of “free advertising” on the internet’s social networking sites such as Facebook, FlickR and You Tube.

On our recent UFO project that we designed and built for New York artist Peter Coffin, we created a 7m diameter structure that was laden with 3,500 controllable lights and then flown on a single strop line under a helicopter. In May 2009 we flew it over the beaches of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. An estimated 500,000 persons gathered on the beaches to watch this strange high-altitude art performance. It was a hugely ambitious project to realise but we did succeed, and met the primary project goal – the flight of a large UFO over a major metropolitan area. What we had really done was create one of the biggest flying LED artworks. Upon reflection, and thinking back to the visions of the future depicted in ‘Bladerunner’, perhaps our technologies are getting us dangerously close to realising the dystopian future of flying billboards and commercialisation of building facades.

From the first hand experiences of these two Cinimod Studio projects what has been proven is that the technology and production abilities exist to integrate LEDs and feature lighting into almost any environment. The next step is to ensure that the content played through these lights, no matter where they are, is relevant and appropriately controlled.

Interactive and Live Control

While some LED-lit building seem to be left in their ‘rainbow-chase’ patterns, it is perhaps not surprising that some of the most experimental and innovative building lighting schemes can be found installed at art galleries and cultural institutions.

I take the examples of two Austrian building: the “Kunsthaus” in Graz by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier, and the “Ars Electronica Centre” in Linz by Andreas Treusch. Both of these are landmark projects in their own right, and designed expressively for art-driven content to be displayed across their media facades.

In the Kunsthaus project a low resolution media screen has been embedded within the undulating plexigas cladding of the building. This lighting system, called “BIX” and developed by the Berlin designers “realties:united”, uses 930 circular fluorescent lamps as the pixels across the facade. These can be controlled for brightness only – there is no colour control. This low resolution media display was conceived as a ‘communicative display scheme’, and is used by visiting artists as a digital canvas. This ensures that the content is always fresh and innovative, and helps establish the media facade as an integral part of the overall building.

The Ars Electronica Center (AEC) features a low resolution media facade that is in colour and covers over 5,000 square metres. The media facade and its tight integration within the architecture create a striking yet sympathetic highlight within the Linz cityscape. Earlier this year YesYesNo, a UK design studio founded by Joel Getthin Lewis, was commissioned to create a new software system for generating live content for the AEC facade.

YesYesNo created a new drawing tool that enabled them to draw across the three dimensional surface of the display, as well as allowing live data feeds from the internet to be used to generate live content. In one particularly beautiful example a data stream reporting the condition on the surface of the sun was used to create live visuals.

To achieve this, YesYesNo made use of an open source software system called OpenFrameworks as the engine to drive the system, which allowed them to very rapidly prototype a set of novel content creation and display tools. In the true spirit of open source software, they released their new tools to the public with the hope that it would enable more people to interact and utilise other media facades as a public resource and art performance canvas.

Both the Kunsthaus and the Ars Electronica Centre projects serve as compelling examples of the benefits of bringing creatives and artists into the design process to provide innovative control systems. In the coming decade we will be increasingly accepting such media facades as ‘another’ piece of the visual environment in which we all live and work, so collectively we should all work on ensuring that their content and physical manifestation is beautiful and relevant.

Conclusion

The time for LEDs is now. Let us all use them to great effect, and create wonderful art and lighting interventions to our buildings, venues, and installations. But let us all maintain a responsibility to our surrounding environment and deploy the lights and media facades with properly curated and considered content so that we all appreciate and admire our LED future.