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Unilumin and WorldStage display giant waves for art installation

Unilumin tiled LED displays, installed by WorldStage, are being used to spectacular effect in a new mixed-media installation by a multimedia artist ‘Platform: Clifford Ross Light | Waves’ , currently at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, is an exhibition of computer-generated ‘Digital Wave’ videos displayed on massive LED screens outside and inside the museum, as well as monumental Hurricane Wave photographs printed on sheets of maple veneer.

Visitors to the museum, and people driving past, see Ross’s dynamic ‘Digital Waves’ continually crashing on two 15m wide LED screens on the Parrish’s south exterior. In the lobby, an 5.5m x 5.5m LED screen further immerses visitors in the virtual ocean.

WorldStage was tasked with providing a complete package, which was comprised of the LED screens, custom rigging solutions for the interior and exterior screens, and a Dataton WATCHOUT media server system. In addition, a control system with a customised user interface was used to allow museum staff to manually affect the installation, which otherwise runs in automatic mode.

“We worked very closely with Clifford’s team and Parrish personnel to put the necessary programming structures in place to overcome some of the normal impediments that we face on these types of jobs,” said Carson Polan-Volpe, project associate, emerging technologies, at WorldStage. “The museum is south-facing so a big concern was visibility of the screens depending on the position of the sun. The desire was to have the installation run from 8:00 am to 11:00 pm. In addition to auto start-up and shutdown, we successfully implemented brightness control of the LED screens based on the sun’s azimuth.”

“Another area of concern was the likely occurrence of inclement weather,” continued Polan-Volpe. “The East End of Long Island is prone to blustery weather, which could potentially adversely affect the outdoor LED screens.”

WorldStage had already opted to go with Unilumin U6 IP65 rated tiles, but it was now incumbent upon the team to deal with anchoring the two 15m wide x 3m tall screens in place. Museum management were steadfast in their desire to avoid marring any part of the building or walkways, which meant the need for a virtually freestanding structure. As a solution, WorldStage designed and fabricated a custom engineer-certified rigging structure consisting of copious amounts of ballast while still maintaining the desired industrial-art look that Ross was after.

WorldStage selected Unilumin U3 tiles for the lobby’s 5.5m square LED wall, which is ground supported. All three LED walls are run from WATCHOUT, and WorldStage technicians are able to log in remotely and monitor the operations of the systems.

WorldStage
Unilumin