Technical Information on the Digital Façade

Image: Led Action Screen. María Langarita & Víctor Navarro.

General information:

The digital façade in Medialab-Prado was designed by Langarita-Navarro arquitectos as part of the project for the renovation of the "Serrería Belga" building.

Adjacent to the north face of the "Serrería Belga" building, it has 14,5 meters width and has a height of 9,4 meters.
It is located into the "Plaza de las Letras", a space divided into two levels. The size of this square is around 25x30 meters.

Timetable

The technical characteristics of the façade allow the optimal view during the evening.

Resolution

In despite of the physical size of the façade (15x10 meters), it's resolution could be considered low, just 192x157 nodes. To correctly visualize content on it, it is necessary to adapt it to the size in nodes and take into account the shape of the façade.

A pixel in the monitor of the computer it's equivalent to a node in the façade.
If the images or video do not fit the required size, they would have to be transformed, resulting in a possible degradation in quality.

The aspect ratios that best suit the resolution of the screen are 5:4 and 4:3, but it is recommended to create the content in the native size of 192x157.

The black coloured letters are the size of each part. The red coloured letters show the actual position of the pixels where the application should be placed. The light grey area correspond to the façade and the darker ones would not be showed.

Formats

Recommended formats are AVI for video and PNG for images and they would be played with an specific application for the façade.

Interaction

On top of the screen there has been a CCTV colour camera system installed. This could be used by projects based in movement recognition and computer vision.

Any technology could be utilized as long as it can show an image in the required positions.

Some examples that we have used are: Open CV, Processing, OpenFrameworks.
 

Sound

The façade does not count with a sound system

Technical information:

> Download complete information in pdf in English (11Mb)

The MEDIALAB-PRADO's LED screen uses the  Philips Color Kinetics iCOLOR FLEX SLX system.
It is formed by a series of rectangular panels that are fixed to the facade of the building that faces North. There are a total of 94 panels, arranged in the following way:

A top edge consiting of 14 type B panels, measuring 0.9m x 1.2m (3'x4')
Each type B panel has 4 stripes of 48 nodes each (16 x 12 pixels).

An inferior rectangle consisting of 80 type A panels, measuring 0.9m x 1.87m (3'x6').
Each type A panel has 6 stripes of 50 nodes each (25 x 12 pixels).

Digital facade's size, inferior rectangle:
Width: 14.5 m (48')
Height: 9.4 m (30')

Digital facade's resolution:
Horizontal resolution: 192 lines
Minimum vertical resolution: 125 lines
Maximum vertical resolution: 157 lines
Resolution: 192 x 157

Nodes/Pixels:
Number of nodes (inferior rectangle): 24.000
Number of total nodes: 26.680
Each node is composed of 7 LED's; 2 red, 3 green, and 2 blue.
The iCOLOR FLEX SLX system can display up to 64.000 million (36bit) of RGB additive colors, of constantly variable intensity.

Brightness:
Callibrated brightness: 114 Cd/m2

Type of video inputs:
DVI 1024x768@60Hz

Position and size of content:
Animation size: 192 x 157
Position: Left top corner @ DVI pixel 40,40

Physical dimentions of the square (Plaza de Las Letras):
Length: 30 m (100')
Width: 15 m (50')

Viewing distance:
Pixel pitch: 75 mm
Minimal: 7 m (23')
Optimum: 30 m (90')
Maximum: 250 m (750')
Viewing angle: 115º

For more information, download complete pdf in English