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Turning SF's Bay Bridge Into a Giant LED Display
waderoush writes "It may be the biggest art hack ever: a project to install 25,000 individually addressable LED lights on the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. New York-based 'light sculptor' Leo Villareal was in San Francisco last week to test the vast 'Bay Lights' art installation, which will officially debut on March 5 and last for two years; Xconomy has photos and video of Villareal running the light show from his laptop. To optimize his algorithms and figure out which patterns would be most interesting or arresting, Villareal needed to experiment on the bridge itself, says Bay Lights director Ben Davis, who has raised $5.8 million for the project so far. 'This has never been done before in history — literally debugging software 500 feet in the air, in front of a million people,' says Davis."
Lets stop the overuse and abuse of legitimate technical terms already. It's like calling him a "hacker" - oh wait, TFA and TFEditor already did. I guess it makes sense the the "director" is the one using the term - since he's the farthest from the actual work, you'd expect him to be the most out of touch.
Woz and Linus are hackers, and debuggers... and some would argue artists. This guy is perhaps an artist, but no hacker.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
'debugging software in the air'
Or he could run it from a media server with Chamsys MagicQ (free as in beer). That's 48 universes in DMX. Plenty of video walls are run that way, and for touring lighting folks, there's nothing to break a sweat here. You can spend some time to map out the physical locations of each 'pixel' so you can run graphics over the wall, no matter whether the wall is rectangular-shaped or bridge-shaped.
Debugging isn't really interesting just because you do it in the air. A lot of people do that on longer flights and call that "Tuesday". On the other hand, the endless potentials for hacking this thing to display something obscene are going to be nearly irresistable to a certain kind of person. You know the type I'm talking about. (dramatic pause)
Yes, you.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Literally never done before? This person perhaps isn't familiar with other computerized enterprises that have been witnessed by millions of people. Space shuttle launches? How about massive light shows for concerts?
Get over yourself.
That aside, I hope it's a good show, and gets more folks interested in art and technology and keeps money flowing into those kind of works.
Long live the BSD license
If you get a chance could you let us know how this looks from space?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
ok..contribute to light-pollution & energy-wastage. Dont these guys have better things to do..Like plant trees in a design in a pattern?
resolution.
[quote] It may be the biggest art hack ever: a project to install 25,000 individually addressable LED lights [/quote]
Uhm, have you ever seen peoples Christmas led projects? Google it, check it on youtube. There are literally roofs made as video screens with millions of leds all over the house, all individually addressable.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
They have better things to do than snipe at you on slashdot.
I don't.
Infuriate left and right
Waste of money, increase of light pollution, and a distraction to drivers. At least the money is from donations and not from the city's budget. As for testing, it definitely can be done through a simulator. It may not be cost effective but it's easily possible, including the light's reflections off the water.
What steps does someone need to take to be able to install lights on the Bay Bridge and control them? I can make pretty patterns in light too, and it would be a lot of fun. What did he do to be able to do that? Because I want to control it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Does anyone know what hardware they are using?
"which patterns would be most interesting or arresting"
Huh? Obviously the natural use of this is for advertising--and the advertising agencies know how to make interesting or arresting ads.
The cost of living here is outrageous. The city, county and state are bankrupt. THe middle class is shrinking, schools stink, and the situation is dire.
Let's get Effie Trinket to drape lights all over the bridges and say oo and aaaah.
Unreal.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Stunningly beautiful. It would be even cooler synced to some fast classical music. Why are they taking it down in two years? Won't the LEDs last longer?
Once.
"debug" has been used since Edison days at least, over a hundred years ago. It means get the bugs out. It applies to far more than just debugging programs.
This post is part of the process of debugging your post.
http://www.diaocvang.info/du-an/du-an-golden-bay-gia-tri-vang-noi-dang-cap-the-hien.html
and figure out which patterns would be most interesting or arresting
That's easy
Done already in Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. Video is boring but you can fast forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQkNpGBGpM
I cannot see any authenticity in this project, also hacking?!?
If you live in the area, you must see this! I was driving on the bridge one night and didn't realize they were testing, it almost made me regret moving off of Treasure Island.
literally debugging software 500 feet in the air, in front of a million people,' says Davis.
Wow, when you put it like that it sounds really fucking boring.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I appreciate arts.
I appreciate arts that are meaningful.
Good music. Nice paintings. Beautiful sculptures.
Those are arts.
On the other hand, there are a lot of "arts" that I have serious doubt. Such as this "art hack".
Just because this thing uses 25,000 individually addressable LED lights, doesn't make it "artsy".
Just because the thing runs from the person's laptop doesn't make it "art", either.
What is there to stop this from turning into a pissing contests ?
Someone-else gonna come up with yet-another-project using 35,000 individually addressable LED lights, or 45,000, or 55,000 ... since, "bigger is better", right?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Art" --> "Advertising"
I find it sad that an icon of international repute (I am in the UK) is to be used as a billboard, of even for someone's art. Such bridges are already art in themselves. It is like using an Old Master as a base for some aerosol art.
If that's great art, the Christmas lights at my local pub were a fucking timeless masterpiece.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Blinking LEDs on a bridge! It must be a bomb! Call Homeland Security!
I dunno.
a) This isn't really 'hacking.' I find some of the stuff they do o HackaDay way more interesting than this. There, they're combining existing tools and systems in ways never before envisioned. There's real creativity there. This guy is basically doing something that's been done a lot already (every Xmas, in some towns) but on a much larger scale. Boring!
b) As an engineer, if you're debugging in front of millions of people, you F'ed up! You design your system, prototype it, test it, scale it, then build it. If you're debugging on "go day," you are a colossal failure.
c) How the hell did people decide to chip in millions of dollars for this stunt? Sure, it will look cool. But aren't there more interesting/clever uses for that kind of funding? Oh well, that's America.
Finally, I'm thinking this would be WAY more interesting if someone truly cracks into the guy's software, and on "go day," instead of the image of flags waving in the breeze, the image projected is something unspeakably horrifying.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
When I visited Taipei for the first time, I was amazed at the number of LED-lighted buildings and structures. It seemed like every building and bridge was lit by colored LEDs, many in continuously changing patterns. Once I thought about it a bit, it was obvious, that the home of the LED should be decorated with LEDs. Silicon Valley deserves something like this. If it's done well, it can be a signature piece for the area. I hope it succeeds.
He's got an installation in the underground walkway going between two buildings at the National Gallery in DC.
It's pretty interesting to watch, the patterns are very 'organic',and the algorithms used certainly aren't obvious to me.
That would have been far more spectacular and syncronized to music to boot.
Not the most ambitious new years resolution is it.
eCue does this stuff already and has been used one plenty of large LED installations. This one involved 20,000 channels, for instance. Not that I really have a problem with using custom software, but I get a little curious why it's being done when there are readily available options that are also relatively inexpensive.
And no, I don't work for eCue, but I use their products. There's several other well established control options for this sort of thing as well, I'm just talking about what I know.
a traffic level meter
Well, that's pretty much the standard for heavy-thinking in the art world these days. "What should we do with the Bay Bridge?"; "Let's cover it with a giant TV screen!"
I've seen stupider pieces of art-- like this cutsey bow and arrow over by the same bridge-- but this one does not, shall we say, grab me.
...there's a lot of hyperbole in that article. While 25,000 LEDs is larger than your standard Christmas light display, this is hardly an unheard-of scale install. A couple points:
- These appear to be single-color LED 'pixels', so its safe to assume that each 'pixel' is one control channel. The standard entertainment control protocol allows 512 control channels per 'universe', meaning the entire install is just under 50 universes. That's going to be larger than your standard theatrical show (some shows being in the 10-20 universe range), but I've done plenty of shows that use far more universes than that (Thanks media servers. Love you and Hate you).
- Legacy cabling systems (DMX) would make controlling 50 universes a bit challenging, however sACN systems (essentially DMX over IP) would make this fairly trivial.
- I should hope they're not actually 'debugging' software for this. There are plenty of industry standard systems that could control this wihtout the need to write your own software. Indeed, there are even systems that would take in a video signal and output the necessary control commands to the LEDs, so you wouldn't even need to do the standard lighting programming.
- You're not going to be able to output 50 sACN universes from a laptop, so the laptop is probably just a frontend to installed hardware somewhere else. Then again, as someone who does lighting for a living, I'd just like to say that laptops make crappy control surfaces (specialized control surfaces FTW).
- I'm confused as to why you would need to do anything other than final integration testing once the fixtures are installed on the bridge. Turn everything on, do a linear chase to make sure everything is installed in the correct order and talking, maybe run a cue for giggles, and you're done. There are plenty of industry-standard pre-vis tools (i.e. Cast WYSIWYG) that would eliminate the need to design with the rig up-and-running. Most larger events takes weeks to design and program, and you would normally never have the luxury of having the actual rig to play with for that amount of time.
- Doing lighting projects like this are hardly uncommon any more, and there have been plenty of projects that have used bridges. I'm not saying its not a cool thing to do, but its not as 'groundbreaking' as the article states.
Either the article is all hyperbole to make the project sound more exciting, or the so-called 'light sculptor' has really no idea what he's doing.
This has never been done before in history -- literally debugging software 500 feet in the air, in front of a million people,
Why not? Boeing is trying it with their 787.
Have gnu, will travel.
Who gives a fuck, the media is never going to get it right. The point is that the golden gate bridge is going to look fucking amazing at night for two years. As a NorCal resident, I will be consuming psychedelic substances and walking around the bridge when they light it up in march. San Francisco has so much technology living in at, and such creative people, be they musicians or technologists. It's about time we get some big crazy light show powered by programmable LED lights!
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
If you found the bridge light show impressive, you should check out the Grand Lisboa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnds6tKDwOg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9H83iWD8rE
If you are interested, I am planning to try to go to the OMSI After Dark event here in Portland tonight (Wednesday, January 30), wearing one of my pieces of light art jewelry.
If you can't make it there, I do have a sample of my kind of light art on www.allyn.com
I do go to the Portland Dorkbot meetings at BackSpace wearing my lighted art as well.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
Forget all the arguments about whether the art installation is a hack. The real hack is when someone else gets hold of the lights and make them spell out something like "Turk 182"