"It was important to the lighting design that the installed LED fixtures, DMX controlled as well as video walls, were fully integrated into one system," explained Manuel da Costa of mo2 design who was responsible for the realisation of the lighting and media design concept. "It was also necessary to implement a sophisticated control interface with minimal user interaction. The idea was to create an ambient lighting design and mood management from a mixture of different LED fixtures matching the architectural characteristics."
Multiple moods and looks as well as randomly selected movies can be played back by the lighting control system. The aim of the installation was to programme the fixtures to change automatically every hour the entire look of the whole mall. No single lighting mood should be seen twice.
Another challenge was the large quantity and variety of fixtures, as well as the bidirectional interface to the house lighting. Beside the automated 'Agenda' mode of the grandMA system running in the background it is also possible to have live access to the system.
Programmer Stephan Flören of mo2 design used a grandMA full-size to programme over 3,200 LED fixtures and nine interior LEDon video walls: "We used the Agenda feature of the grandMA to automate the MA control system. Because of grandMA we got a very reliable, comfortable and fully integrated system solution to work with," related Flören.
After the programming phase, the system consists of a grandMA replay unit and a PC running grandMA onPC software as well as eight centralised MA NSPs to calculate more than 14,200 DMX parameters. For on-site service reasons and because of installation space as well as higher flexibility, 21 MA 2Port Nodes were installed to output the DMX signals wherever they are required.
Five grandMA media servers are combined centrally as well which makes the maintenance a lot easier. Two media servers are running in Pixel Mapper mode to control the nine ceiling mounted interior LED video walls. One media server with an additional media server as backup is outputting DVI signals to the outside installed Philips LED video grid. The fifth is used as additional storage and platform for third party content management.
The long distance LAN connections made fibre optic cabling necessary. Media converters, LevelOne 100BaseTX to 100BaseFX, were attached to the network to interconnect the different areas with the MA-Net. A secured virtual private network connection (VPN) enables the system for remote maintenance purposes.
Jürgen Hassler developed the lighting and media design concept, Jörg Privsek the special lighting. Manuel da Costa did the technical construction management. Stephan Flören worked as programmer, Nina Lhotzky as visual art designer. The project was realised by mo2 design.
(Jim Evans)
