Client: DDB Budapest
Concept: DDB Budapest
Location: Budapest, March 15h Square
Year: 2013

About

LedPrinter is a project where we were involved in the realisation of a desire: to be able to literally draw on the sky. The project is about to make this dream happen while introducing the possibilities of wireless technology where small networked devices are connected, programmed to complete several synchronised tasks to introduce the diverse set of services of the client (the hungarian Telecom). By sending status messages, gifts and other socially engaging content through semi-virtual networks, people tend to communicate continuously, without even staying in the same physical place. The LedPrinter is about to mix these activities with a real site, where virtual wishes (through images) take forms diffused with the city landscape.

Realtime experience sharing became a key role in the flow of social events and interactions, although these are mostly happening in front of a flat screen on a desk or a tiny one held in one’s hand. Different set of impressions can be created by extending these screens into spatial configurations and external architectural spaces. The one here turned out to be a twisted mashup of both: the space where the image is created is the open air, forming a three dimensional context somewhere out there in the city that remains invisible for the naked eye. The physically moving lines of corresponding pixels can be perceived only through long exposure photographs that are transmitted back to the (social) network. LedPrinter is a strange printing machine which is taking context out of the virtual, making a distorted, hyperbolic magnification with all of the errors derived from the natural environment (wind, lighting changes, city light pollution etc), recording through a precise, algorithmic choreography and finally transmitting them back into the virtual network to an altered recycled existence.

Realization

 

The system was running for one week, operated during night time to be able to make long exposed photos. A small drone was flying from time to time to carry a three meter colourful LED stripe that was drawing one single line of the processed image during the flight. The LEDs were addressed individually using custom software that processed incoming images from the web in realtime, transmitted the data of individual pixel lines through wireless network and sent out to their destinations using micro controllers and custom wiring. The flight path of the drone was preprogrammed and automated, just like the whole operation of other software components.

The software was made with free and open source creative coding environments (Arduino, OpenFrameworks, Processing). A long exposed image was made during each flight: the resulting diffused image was uploaded to corresponding social media sites and the registered audience of the event. The machine had to make several thousand images during the week. These images were mainly sent in by people around Budapest. The hardware and the concept was made by Eduard Sik, software development, interface design was made by Bence Samu and Agoston Nagy. There were several people from DDB who helped make it happen, also special thanks to Zoltan Csik Kovacs for maintaining continuous on-site help. More images, videos can be found at the project site

Some artworks made during the week:

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