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Massive New 'Salesforce Tower' Light Sculpture: AI, Ubuntu, Fog, and a MacBook (ieee.org)
The new tallest building on the San Francisco skyline -- and the tallest building in America west of the Mississippi -- includes a nine-story electronic sculpture that's been called the tallest piece of public art on Earth. It uses 11,000 LED bulbs reflected off the tower-topping aluminum panels -- each pixel created by a set of red, green, blue and white lights controlled by 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. "On a clear night, the show is visible for 30 miles," reports IEEE Spectrum.
Slashdot reader Tekla Perry shares their article about "the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. Electrical engineer and artist Jim Campbell explains it all -- and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year." "[O]n the 62nd floor, a central PC-based computer runs Ubuntu Linux, sending instructions to a communications control system that splits the data and sends it at 11 Mbit to the 32 enclosures using a custom communications protocol... We will capture images throughout the day, sending them to Amazon's cloud, and run some algorithms designed to identify visual interesting-ness. For example, at its simplest, when we look at the sky, if it's all blue, it's boring, if it's all white, it's boring, if it has white and blue it is likely to be interesting. We'll chose the best half hour of the day at each camera, based on movement and color, to display...."
And finally, when the main display shuts down late at night, another system designed by Campbell will kick in. In this static display, a set of 36 white LEDs will create a three-dimensional constellation of lights that will look like stars. "It's quieter, it has a random aspect to it," he says.
"Since construction started, the tower has emerged as an icon of the new San Francisco -- techie, ambitious, perhaps a little grandiose," writes the New Yorker, capturing the moment when Campbell finally unveiled his four-year project -- while fighting stomach flu and a chest cold, on a night which turned out to be prohibitively foggy. The executive vice-president of Boston Properties told him cheerily, "Jim! Look on the brighter side. We've got every night for the rest of our lives."
"There was a long silence from the people on the terrace. The fog was thick. At last, someone exclaimed, 'Woo-hoo!,' and a volley of cheers followed." Although the colors they were seeing came from the celebratory fireworks and not from Jim's light sculpture.
Are there any San Francisco-area Slashdotters who want to weigh in on the Salesforce Tower?
Slashdot reader Tekla Perry shares their article about "the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. Electrical engineer and artist Jim Campbell explains it all -- and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year." "[O]n the 62nd floor, a central PC-based computer runs Ubuntu Linux, sending instructions to a communications control system that splits the data and sends it at 11 Mbit to the 32 enclosures using a custom communications protocol... We will capture images throughout the day, sending them to Amazon's cloud, and run some algorithms designed to identify visual interesting-ness. For example, at its simplest, when we look at the sky, if it's all blue, it's boring, if it's all white, it's boring, if it has white and blue it is likely to be interesting. We'll chose the best half hour of the day at each camera, based on movement and color, to display...."
And finally, when the main display shuts down late at night, another system designed by Campbell will kick in. In this static display, a set of 36 white LEDs will create a three-dimensional constellation of lights that will look like stars. "It's quieter, it has a random aspect to it," he says.
"Since construction started, the tower has emerged as an icon of the new San Francisco -- techie, ambitious, perhaps a little grandiose," writes the New Yorker, capturing the moment when Campbell finally unveiled his four-year project -- while fighting stomach flu and a chest cold, on a night which turned out to be prohibitively foggy. The executive vice-president of Boston Properties told him cheerily, "Jim! Look on the brighter side. We've got every night for the rest of our lives."
"There was a long silence from the people on the terrace. The fog was thick. At last, someone exclaimed, 'Woo-hoo!,' and a volley of cheers followed." Although the colors they were seeing came from the celebratory fireworks and not from Jim's light sculpture.
Are there any San Francisco-area Slashdotters who want to weigh in on the Salesforce Tower?
I assume there’s a MacBook mentioned somewhere, but it’s certainly not in this summary. So if it’s not important enough for the summary, why put it in the title?
#DeleteChrome
Lots of people use PIC parts. Technically, there was a huge boost in usage a few years ago when Microchip bought Atmel.
They're peripheral components.
I'm going to say that Salesforce is over-charging.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yes, but what about the AI? /s
Screw that light pollution. The stars are much more interesting to see.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Can we in Europe take a moment to appreciate the application of GDPR here. The popup gives a of 10 cookies, broken up into editorial, content personalisation, and analytics, along with them a link to the privacy policy of each company.
By default only the analytics ones are ticked, and unlike many other sites which missed the point of the GDPR the site continues to function if you untick them and it doesn't appear to try and load the cookies if you don't tick the box.
The only problem really is that I don't retain cookies between sessions so it's going to come up with that popup again, next time, but at least it appears not to pay lip service while continuing to screw the users.
Wikipedia says the Wilshire Grand Center in LA is 29 feet taller than the Salesforce Tower. The article only claims, "the tallest building, floor to roof, west of the Mississippi River."
Uninspired is right. I interviewed at their location in Bellevue, WA (former HQ of Microsoft and the current HQ of Expedia is a block south) a few months ago, and I think all of the interviewers mentioned their "Mindfulness Zone." Sounds like pandering to millennials. My passion in tech is making things simpler and faster for users. They instead talked about grand ideas and the importance of doing things differently from everyone else. They sent me a rejection by email saying they didn't think I would fit into their culture because of my age. They put that in writing. That's just plain stupid and opens them up to a lawsuit.
Anyway, their location is pretty damn nice as this video shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZRnZxMSF7A
To the neon Gods they made.
of light pollution.
and, btw, get the hell off my lawn!
Absolute statements are never true
See the stars? San Francisco? There seems to be some sort of fundamental conceptual misunderstanding here.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Stuff as pointless and wasteful as this is usually what we start to see just before a spectacular financial collapse.
Check out Hong Kong, or Bejing, or Shanghai sometime - they have many things like this, and have for years. They have been fine.
This kind of stuff is not really a sign of financial excess, more a sign of how things like this are becoming cheaper and cheaper for companies to add to buildings for decoration.
Also putting up a huge display may seem expensive but there are cost savings from having a large area with no windows - cheaper heating/cooling bills for the building as a whole.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can't see stars in major cities anyway, may as well have a pretty night skyline. Many nights the sky has a constant orange glow.
When I moved to my non-major city I freaked out the first time I looked up at night from a random street with no streetlights and saw stars... it took me a few seconds to realize what they were. I don't think I'd ever noticed stars (aside from the sun) in person until that moment, which was after I could legally drink. Makes me wonder how many people have never seen them "live" in their entire life.
Stuff as pointless and wasteful as this is usually what we start to see just before a spectacular financial collapse.
Good rule of thumb: Whenever a company pays millions for the "naming rights" to a stadium or sports area, you should short their stock.
According to Wikipedia, Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco and tallest building in rooftop height west of Chicago, but notes that overall it is the second tallest building west of the Mississippi--Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles being the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
I liked the youtube clip linked. Charming and somewhat reminiscent of Blade Runner.
I currently live in Hong Kong, several skyscrapers do a bit of a lightshow and the tallest building (ICC) also features beautiful evening animations over its height, but they are monochrome.
Most local people and visitors like these animations and light shows, quite different from the soul crushing negativity one again on display here.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.
They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck That.
Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
You'd never been out of a city your entire life, at night time?
I am local (across the bay) and I can tell you that the Salesforce Tower sticks out like a sore thumb. Arrogant egotistic overkill. I have not met anyone that likes the way it transforms the look of beautiful San Francisco. SF used to have a very strong preservationist city hall; I guess the last decade or two have seen them become hypnotized by the tech money. Too bad, that ugly thing is there to stay. And the light show ("art" ha ha) at the top is going be pouring salt on the wound. Creepy.
I had but was always curfued indoors at night, or in college and too busy doing schoolwork at night. I'd also been to northern NJ but light pollution doesn't respect political boundaries. So finally it was walking home from the bus from work that got me to look up and see the awesomeness of the true night sky.
Get cracking...
Wow! A new derivative "AMD vs. Intel" style tussle we can get into.
It's wierd, isn't it? I grew up in a small town (~3000 ppl) and grew up looking at the sky. Then I moved 'north of 60' and was gobsmacked by the northern lights. Then I moved to the Caribbean and stared at the 'bathtub moon' ("I thought those were only in cartoons or the movies!"
Then I moved to Toronto, and missed the sky. I'd go out camping for the pure benefit of being able to see my childhood friends again.
Many of my friends had grown up in Toronto and never left. "Why would I, the city has everything I could want? If I want to see stars the internet has pictures from any telescope I could imagine." It's hard to explain the color blue to a person who has never seen.
I live in a smaller town again, and thankfully my daughter sees the stars now and never ceases to point them out. I feel like I dodged a bullet there.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before