Playhouse, Liberty Hall , Dublin

Daft.ie presents Playhouse as part of the
Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

From the 24th of September until the 11th of October 2009, the iconic Liberty Hall building in Dublin’s city centre will be transformed into a giant 50 metre, low resolution, TV screen. Members of the public are invited to create animations with sound and music, via our website, and broadcast them across the city’s skyline.

Powering the display are 100,000 low-energy LED lights, installed into 330 windows on the south and west faces of the building. These lights can illuminate each window as a solid colour turning it into a tiny pixel that’s part of a giant display.

Daft.ie were approached with the Playhouse idea late last year. They loved the idea and jumped on board as main sponsor and agreed to fund the project. The team was then pulled together through connections made at the Trinity Science Gallery. For nearly a year, the team have been busy creating some amazing technology and are looking forward to showcasing it to the public on the 24th of September.

Originally inspired by the Blinkenlights installation in Berlin, Playhouse raises the technological bar with the ability to produce colour animations along with sound and music (broadcast over FM radio within the vicinity of the building).

Low Impact

Our lighting technology has a tiny footprint – This means we can install it in a building without impacting the people that work there. It was installed in Liberty Hall for a full two months before Playhouse started.

A narrow strip of ultra-bright LEDs are installed into every window frame along with a small controller box. The controllers connect to the central computer using existing CAT5 network cabling in the building – This means that we don’t need to install any additional wiring.

Low Energy

Our LEDs are super-efficient. Each floor of the installation uses less energy than a standard kettle.

Full Colour

Our software and LEDs operate in full 24-bit colour (the same as DVDs)

Sound and Music

You can add sound effects or a soundtrack to your animation. These are then broadcast over FM radio within the vicinity of the building in sync with your animation. You can even use a song from your own library as we have copyright agreements the appropriate music rights organisations.

Producers

Adrián Acosta

Adrián is an events producer and project manager. Over the last 10 years he has worked in Ireland, the UK, Mexico and Argentina. He has a particular interest in the use of public spaces and public interaction. He is delighted to have the opportunity to work on this innovative project.

Brian Fallon

After stumbling upon the Blinkenlights Reloaded installation on a trip to Berlin in 2003, Brian became captivated with the concept and the idea of doing a similar project in Dublin. Several years later, following a conversation in the Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin he was introduced to a number of like-minded people that came together to form the Playhouse team.

Carina McGrail

Carina has produced a number of large-scale cultural programmes and site specific events in Ireland. She works with St Patrick’s Festival, programming the festival’s spectacle programme and parade. She has produced several international arts projects including two EU Culture 2000 projects, involving Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, France and Spain. Carina is delighted to be part of the team to mount a lighting installation of this scale in Dublin and can’t wait to see Liberty Hall all lit up.

Lead Development

Tim Redfern

Interactive artist and developer involved in development of Playhouse’s
function and appearance, and developing the playapp Processing library.
eclectronics.org

Jack Phelan

Jack works mostly as a video and electronics designer. Responsible for hardware design and specification and marquee fabrication for Playhouse.
secretspaces.org

Brian Solon

Brian is a Dublin-based developer, interactive artist & creative technologist. His role on Playhouse involved software and hardware architecture and development.
twitter.com/brian9

Development

Daniel Burke

Responsible for the design and implementation of the scheduling/management component of Playhouse. Daniel currently works for a multi-national educational software company.

Paul Conroy

Paul build the the backend system to process and moderate the submissions from the public. A late addition to the team, Paul came on board to rescue us when we started receiving more submissions then we could handle.

Ruaidhrí Devery

Interactive designer and Flash developer at Fluid based in Dublin, Ireland. Carried out the user interface, graphic design and AS3 development for the Playhouse Animation Creator application.
www.fluid.ie

Jonny McCauley

Jonny McCauley is a creative freelancer who specialises in web design, graphic design, motion graphics and photography. Jonny was responsible for the design and branding of the Playhouse project.
jonnymccauley.com

Production Team

Daniel Aspell

Dan contributed to the development of the project at the initial planning stages and worked on the construction of the marquee lightboxes. Daniel is also a freelance graphic & web designer.

Joy Doyle

Joy contributed to the endless testing of the hardware and was part of the core team who installed it in the building. She is a theatre lighting technician. She is currently working at the Gaiety Theatre and has worked in many touring productions.

Sinéad Hegarty

Sinéad contributed to the installation in the building. She is a theatre technician currently working in the Gaiety Theatre. She will be missed come September when she will leave theatre to study nursing.

Erin Hermosa

Erin came in to save the day and keep us on schedule by wiring the marquee. She wired the light boxes that work.

Tara Kelly

Being from New York, Tara is quite used to tall buildings. She helped installed 000’s of LEDs into Dublin’s tallest one.

Marcio Oliveira

Marcio is a skilled carpenter. A native of Brazil he’s been living and working in Ireland for the last number of years. He managed to move walls on the top floor of Liberty Hall for us to fit our marquee sign. He supports Corinthians who also have to move walls to win the league.

Brian O’Loughlin

Brian helped construct and wire the marquee light-boxes that enable us to stream text across the top floor. With three times more pixels than the main display, the wiring of the marquee was a dual feat of engineering and endurance.

David O’Loughlin

David meticulously prepared and wired the LEDs that make up each pixel in the marquee (1,050 in total). David is a student of Computer Science in the Dublin Institute of Technology. David also produced artwork for the Playhouse website, including the creatives for our banner adverts.

Thomas Rohan

Thomas helped mastermind the use of velcro on the project and led the installation of hardware in the building. He is been working in theatre and lighting for the last 7 years. He worked with Druid Theatre Company, Riverdance and artists from Tommy Tiernan to Metallica. He Likes sunsets and long walks on the beach, but hates Velcro and LED lighting.

Cormac Veale

Cormac was part of the core team who installed the hardware in the building. He is a freelance theatre technician and has worked as a lighting designer, production manager, production chief electrician and technician for the past 6 years.

Content Team

Ciara Lockhart

Ciara was jointly responsible with Colm for curating and moderating the submissions that came into Playhouse.

Colm McCauliffe

When curating and moderating the submissions, Colm and Ciara managed to watch every second of every animation. Pretty impressive then you think that Playhouse was running for over 200 hours – we did show some repeats though .

Denise Rushe

Our Twitter followers and Facebook fans now know Denise well, she greets them every morning with the latest updates from the Playhouse team. Denise was responsible for driving the social media marketing behind Playhouse.

Jill Unkel

Jill was responsible for animating some sequences for our special events. She has become particularly skilled at animating characters at tiny resolutions – If only they still made Atari games, she’d be sorted.

Consultants

Becky Crawley Legal, LK Sheilds
Jeremy Boyle Accounts
Andy Ewings Health and Safety, Safe Events
Paul Taaffe Electrics

Live Camera Position Facilitated By:

Special Thanks

Tony Walsh Property Manager, SIPTU, Liberty Hall
Loughlin Deegan Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival
Stephen McManus Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival
Odhran Ginnity Daft.ie
Simon Scott Accuris Networks
Michael John Gorman Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin
Dennis Deng China Production Coordinator

Presented By Daft.ie

Daft.ie are very happy to be the main sponsor of the Playhouse project. Daft.ie is Ireland’s largest property website and one of Ireland’s best known online brands. Founded in 1997, Daft.ie has revolutionised how people in Ireland find property to rent, buy or share. Over 90% of the entire Irish property market is listed on Daft and a recent independent audit by ABC Electronic confirmed that Daft.ie was the most visited Irish-owned website. In May 2009 Daft.ie delivered over 103 million pages impressions to over 1.2 million unique browsers.

As part of The Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival

Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival – Europe’s oldest specialist theatre festival and the only English speaking contemporary theatre festival left in the world – is celebrating its 52nd year in 2009. Founded in 1957, it has grown to be Ireland’s premier cultural event, and continues to lead the way in the presentation of outstanding Irish and international performance. Running from September 24–October 11, with 26 shows from 12 countries in 16 venues all over Dublin, this year’s programme will blow you away.

In association with SIPTU

The Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) represents over 200,000 Irish workers from virtually every category of employment across almost every sector of the Irish economy. SIPTU provides the expertise, experience and back-up services necessary to assist workers in their dealings with employers, government and industrial relations institutions.

SIPTU are currently celebrating their centenary year.