Interactive Originals

World Expo Japan

In conjunction with Digital frontiers - and working under contract for 'Think OTS (Outside The Square), Interactive Originals designed and implemented the technical components at the heart of the centrepiece of the Australian Pavilion at World Expo 2005 in Nagoya, Japan. The installation featured 80 x 42" plasma screens arranged into 16 'totems poles' of 5 vertically arranged screens - each running unique, synchronised full resolution imagery on each screen. The overall pixel map had an effective resolution of 4260 x 7680 pixels = 32,716,800 (in layman's terms almost 33 Megapixels!).

It came to be known as the 'data forest'.

The playout system comprised 16 x Apple Macintosh Dual G5 computers - each controlling the content for 5 of the plasmas. Synchronisation of these 16 with each other and the rest of the pavilion was handled by a 17th G5. While an 18th Machine talked to all of the other 17 - seeking reports on their status and confirmation of a successful playback each time the whole system ran. And then published the results on a web page and emailed administrators if there had been any errors with any playback loop. It was a 13 minute loop which ran with virtually no problem 16 hours a day, seven days a week for the 6 months of the Expo. The whole installation integrated with the lighting, sound and automation (doors opening and closing) using a combination of RS422 (serial), MIDI, AMX, DMX and Isadora communication protocols.