Fresno Cultural Arts District
"We couldn’t have asked for a better software partner on this project."
Robb Pope
Founder, Digital Ambiance
Digital Ambiance, an Oakland-based creative lighting installation company, won a project for delivering interactive lighting for Cultural Arts District Park in Fresno, California. In the park, there are 5 large canopies that serve as a diffuser of the DMX lighting arrays installed above them. The lighting array interacts with people on the square using 15 thermal cameras.
Digital Ambiance first came in touch with LightAct in 2013 and since then, it’s their first choice for interactive projects. The main factor in their decision making is LightAct’s 24/7 reliability combined with a flexible Layer Layout system allowing them to create custom logic.
Digital Ambiance partnered with Anticlockwise Arts, an interactive arts studio from Oakland, who created a C++ based content plugin. It’s designed to pull data from a custom-built computer vision plug-in for LightAct and output a real-time generative artwork inspired by the City of Fresno.
"The entire process was smooth and professional."
Robb Pope
Founder, Digital Ambiance
LightAct team flew to the site to help with the system setup. They created a virtual DMX fixture for each canopy using LightAct’s intuitive DMX interface. LightAct’s reActor X2 server (predecessor to current reActors) outputs 5 universes of Art-Net signal to control custom-built DMX fixtures designed by Digital Ambiance.
Robb, from Digital Ambiance, said: “LightAct was instrumental in the design and development of the interactive portion of our project. We spent nearly a full year planning and negotiating with our client (the city). LightAct was there every step of the way. We brought on an outside programmer to develop the actual light patterns that the system would use. LightAct was able to integrate our custom code with their server easily. The process was smooth and professional.”
LightAct Manager was set up on-site to re-start the project in case of any power outages and additionally, the system is set up to boot-up automatically the moment the power comes back online.
Equipment
1 x LightAct X2 (predecessor of current reActors) |
15 x FLIR cameras |