[COM] Rundle Lantern

[AtD]

Any chance of some video?

[Nathan]

I thought something was up when I went past the lantern last week:

AN INTERSTATE computing expert is being flown into Adelaide to fix "bugs" that jammed the $2 million Rundle Lantern in the middle of Fringe celebrations. The Lantern was opened in October as the "the city's new cultural canvas" but has already run into problems while attempting to screen specially-designed festival artwork.

Lord Mayor Michael Harbison said the nine-storey high screen simply went into "freeze frame" on Friday and Saturday nights.
"The Rundle Lantern is starting to show off some very sophisticated work with the Fringe and, perhaps interestingly, its brought out some bugs in the Lantern," he said.
"Its a very complex artistic and computing issue, and an expert is flying into Adelaide to look at this to see why the Fringe art is too sophisticated for these computers.
"We're keen to get to the bottom of it."

Mr Harbison said it was understandable there would be teething problems with new technology.
The 1066-square metre Lantern is made of 748 square LED panels attached to the side of a parking garage on the corner of Rundle and Pulteney streets.
The Lantern is 100 per cent green powered and the light show is carbon neutral.

I'm curious as to why these kind of things weren't tested?

[Prince George]

Lord Mayor Michael Harbison said the nine-storey high screen simply went into "freeze frame" on Friday and Saturday nights. "The Rundle Lantern is starting to show off some very sophisticated work with the Fringe and, perhaps interestingly, its brought out some bugs in the Lantern," he said. "Its a very complex artistic and computing issue, and an expert is flying into Adelaide to look at this to see why the Fringe art is too sophisticated for these computers.
"We're keen to get to the bottom of it."

I'm curious as to why these kind of things weren't tested?

The problem may lie in the whole system being to large and expensive for them to have two - one for use and one for test. So you have to rely on testing components in isolation (and missing out on emergent interactions) or by emulating other parts of the system (when your emulation may not be accurate). Although it occurs to me that in this case there is a third option - you could run your tests on the real device during the day, when people aren't going to see it if it fails.

I'm curious to know what skills were needed for handling this that weren't already available in the state - who is this "computing expert" that we had to fly in? Any young hackers out there that are still studying should pay attention too: there's a gap in SA's skills that is important enough for people to pay external consultants to deal with it.

[Damien @ Fusion]

Make a Move - Youth Week Rundle Lantern opportunity

This may be of interest to some people in the SA community...

"For National youth Week, Adelaide City Council is hosting a competition for budding digital artists. You can compete to have your design screened on Adelaide’s Rundle Lantern during May!"

Details here
HTTP://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/script ... =PC_110113

attabeb6.jpg (124.15 KiB) Viewed 5649 times

[Howie]

Submitted a news tip to Gizmodo.net on Rundle Lantern and it got published!

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/05/adela ... ralia.html

Adelaide's Rundle Lantern Is The Best Looking Parking Lot In Australia


Take one hideously ugly parking station in the heart of Adelaide and add 748 square LED panels and what do you get? 1066 square metres of nighttime lightshow entertainment.


The Rundle Lantern, created by Fusion Innovation Agency for the Adelaide City Council, opened on October 24 last year. It now runs nightly light shows from 6pm to midnight, and while it's not quite high-def, it is reportedly the largest such display in Australia.

Because it's located on the side of a parking garage, the design required each square to offer enough room for ventilation, yet remain close enough together so that the entire screen would could create larger images. The end result looks pretty fantastic, even when the entire thing isn't switched on.



I'm not sure the Rundle Lantern is worth making a trip to see, but if you happen to be travelling to Adelaide anyway, make sure you check it out.

[monotonehell]

Good job Howie. Pitty about the two "oh adelaide isn't that good" posts. What's wrong with some people?

We have the Lantern AND the O-Bahn. What more do they need?

[peas_and_corn]

It would be awesome if they covered the whole parking building with it, then there could be some crazy large displays on it.

[Waewick]

This may sound stupid

but, what would be the chances of organizing a tetris competition on the lantern?

I realise it sounds geeky, but how much of a laugh would it be (for charity even) to have people playing it on say a saturday or friday night. There seems to be enough cells to do it. I guess the only would be having system to do it and gaining permission to use tetris.

[Xaragmata]

This may sound stupid

but, what would be the chances of organizing a tetris competition on the lantern?

I realise it sounds geeky, but how much of a laugh would it be (for charity even) to have people playing it on say a saturday or friday night. There seems to be enough cells to do it. I guess the only would be having system to do it and gaining permission to use tetris.

I don't know how easy that would be, but some falling Tetris patterns should be easy, as with google celebrating 25 years of Tetris:


Tetris Holdings LLC apparently owns the rights.

[Waewick]

you need to have about 10 blocks wide which I think is available on each side?

I don't know how easy it would be but I reckon it would be an interesting exercise.

[darksidelemm]

Unless things have changed recently, there is still no system in place to display live data on the lantern.

AFAIK (Note: this information was from the early days of the lanterns operation, and may have changed) the lanterns backend software (a commercial product called 'Hippotizer') takes video at 720x576 (PAL), crops out a section of it, then shrinks that to the correct lantern resolution (I forget what it is now), then drives the lantern via the DMX protocol.

It might be possible to get live data up on the lantern by feeding in a video output from something to the software, but I have no idea if this is supported. There's also then the question of lag, as from what I could gather from the guys at the information session, the machine doing the video processing is not at the lantern site.

It would be nice if someone at Fusion could comment on any technical developments regarding the lantern, as all we've seen from them so far is advertisements for events and such.

Also: have those 2 dead pixels (Well, 4 - 2 pixels per block) been fixed yet? They've been dead for about 3 weeks now!

[peachy]

Yes Tetris on the lanterns would be very cool. As my mind trys to comprehend it, my imagination runs off with all the possibilities. Indulge me if you will (or stop reading now if you haven't the time):

Why not do it in conjunction with a start up of a 'Pop culture festival', where we celebrate everything that has ingrained itself into having a cult following status. We could have lemmings (folk in green wigs) running down rundle mall bumping into stuff, MMORPG styled laser tag in the parklands, and of course classic pixilated games competitions (tetris, snake, pong, maybe an early mario pixels permitting) with the final played on the laterns at night. Or if a live feed is not a possibility, just replay the final the next night. And all that is just the cult video games, i wont go further off topic with my movie and tv related ideas.
There was a short film on the lantern as part of the fringe this year (i believe it was a pixilated cartoon of sinbad), which definitely looked like a 1980's video game. So maybe even a very early on platform game could be played (or design a purpose made one).

Speaking as a member of gen-y, my generation loves paying tribute to these types of pop culture (generally because they are entwined with our childhood and bring back good memories) so i think a pop-cult-fest with tetris on the big screen would most certainly be a hit.

[Howie]

Just been informed by Damien Mair of Fusion... launch of the solar power grid that powers the lantern is tonight. Will have a roundup shortly.

[Prince George]

The Queen and I had our first chance to see the lantern tonight, after the Fringe parade, and we are very happy to see it brightening up that corner of the city. Especially on such a wildly busy night in town, where the crowds crossing the street were so large that they just walked along Rundle Street among the cars even before the section that was actually closed off. We noticed that we weren't the only ones standing and watching it, and there were many people photographing it. Things like this will leave a good image for visitors that come over these next few weeks.

Props to the people that came up with this idea - it's simple, but very cool - and to the council for making it happen.

Had a thought about that bottom row of panels that don't have any lights on them: there could be a trailing display along there showing things like artist credits.

[rubegoldbergdevice]

Had a thought about that bottom row of panels that don't have any lights on them: there could be a trailing display along there showing things like artist credits.

Awesome idea.