This week, with the assistance of Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys, the Empire State Building (ESB) launched its new LED lighting system. Designed by world renowned designer Marc Brickman, the landmark building’s first-ever video LED light show was driven by Hippotizer media servers controlled by GrandMA2.
Outputting KiNet to the ESB’s recently installed LED lighting network, six Hippo HDs drove an astonishing 11,500 pixel-mapped DMX channels to four types of Phillips Color Kinetics RGB fixtures located on the building’s top four tiers. Brickman’s design was executed by Programmer Tony Fransen, assisted by Hippo Technician Darien Koop. The spectacular show, visible throughout the city and surrounding areas, ran in conjunction with a rooftop performance by Alicia Keys on a neighboring building. The artiste used the occasion to introduce her new album “Girl on Fire“.
The pixel-mapping for this show represents a unique development: In a typical pixel-map, the fixtures are visible and are viewed and mapped in their real-world locations. In last Monday’s ESB show the fixtures were not visible, instead they were viewed and mapped where they threw onto the building, turning the individual illuminated areas of the building into multiple video pixels, and expanding each pixel to HUGE proportions. This effect was consistent across all sides of the building. The show’s pixel-maps were all created by first making one master map in Hippo’s PixelMapper component, which was then split into four separate maps, one for each side of the building.
For those in the region with a clear view of the ESB the show was broadcast live over Clear Channel’s New York radio stations. See spectacular video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6gQsAlx4vU. See more about the ESB LED installation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWQBqjuZ1sA
TMB is exclusive distributor for Hippotizer in The Americas. Read more about Hippotizer at www.tmb.com/products/hippotizer.