Celebrating 100 years of passenger service at Grand Central Station, New York City commuters were treated to a festive display on the west side of the station’s main concourse. The installation was comprised of 354 Martin Stagebar 54™ LED fixtures displaying video content driven by a single Hippotizer HD media server.
More details from Hippotizer (www.tmb.com/products/hippotizer):
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Metro-North Railroad partnered with Toshiba for a gala video display celebrating 100 years of passenger service at Grand Central Station. New York City commuters were treated to a festive display on the west side of the station’s main concourse, provided by 354 Martin Stagebar 54™ LED fixtures displaying video content driven by a single Hippotizer HD media server.
Sean Cagney of Amazing Industries created the video content with direction by designer Michiru Tanaka. “We used lighting fixtures as the sole medium to create imagery that was easily relatable to Grand Central,” says Sean, “but being integrated into the architecture created a stunning work of art. With a resolution of 8 windows tall by 360 LEDs wide it was a challenge; every element had to be created and animated from scratch. The incredibly bright fixtures controlled by video clips left us editing relative brightness on site, as expected.
“The Hippotizer software was integral to our workflow and playback – one machine pushing 24 universes of DMX control – and the 24/7 tech support from TMB and Green Hippo was stellar,” Cagney adds.
“We were programming during afternoons out in the center of the room, so New Yorkers were happy to give us direction and feedback as they walked by; it was great having the positive feedback albeit somewhat distracting.”
The installation was managed and implemented by Van Allen Rice and Kevin O’Brien of Bestek Lighting & Staging, Inc., Babylon, NY. Joshua Fleittel of Dubpixel in Brooklyn programmed the media and was on call to maintain the installation during the holiday season.
