DENVER – For the Medtronic booth at a recent Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) exhibition, John Featherstone of lighting and visual design company Lightswitch worked with exhibit producer Group Delphi to create an animated ceiling of Martin LC Series LED panels. "Every year Medtronic likes to do something that is environmental and technology focused yet a little more art installation and less straight corporate branding – something that raises the intellectual component of the booth," Featherstone said.
The idea was to set the booth apart and encourage doctors and other visiting health care professionals to linger in the booth area, not just use the video panels as a regular video screen and message delivery device.
Lightswitch had also used LED panels on the ceiling for the Nintendo booth at last year's E3 show. "It is really the last unexplored frontier of exhibit work," Featherstone said, of the idea to use the LED ceiling to communicate that something special was in store for visitors to the booth.
For the large Medtronic booth, the LED ceiling included two long rows of panels to extend the booth's length, attracting attention with video clouds floating over the booth.
"The ceiling-based device proved very effective," Featherstone said. "It not only defined the shape of the booth and took ownership of the space, but people just aren't used to seeing the ceiling being utilized and found it visually interesting; it gave a really interesting sense of positioning within the show floor."
Featherstone chose LC panels for a number of reasons. "It's an extremely bright panel that hits the sweet spot between low and high resolution; it all went up incredibly rapidly in one day thanks to the structural nature and integrity of the frame; and the lightweight and rigid nature of the LC meant we didn't need a lot to hang them from."
Lightswitch and Group Delphi chose the content from Lightswitch's stock library, using Martin's Maxedia Broadcast media server as a type of idea generating sketchbook for content. Jason Lindahl was the media programmer, with on-site supervision from Lacey Taylor. Both are with Lightswitch.
All media content across the panels was driven through Martin's P3-100 system controller, a video signal processor that allows LED screens to be treated like lighting instruments through direct DMX control of brightness, color, pixel-mapping and more.
"It's an incredible tool in terms of the ability to micro-align a large display like this," Featherstone said. "To have the P3 with the ability to get the panels in perfect alignment was invaluable. It's been the answer to so many of our prayers in working with the LC panels. It's a great improvement on what was already a valuable product."
Featherstone also credited Martin for support. "Martin is with us 100 percent and we really value the spirit of partnership that Martin has with us, particularly when we're trying to do things that are a little out of the ordinary," he said.
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