Movable Type— 560 Displays Are Suspended in Two Identical Arrays

While not exactly a digital signage installation,
we thought this story would be of interest to many of
our readers for its concept and execution.

Located in the central corridor of the recently completed
New York Times Building’s ground floor lobby, Moveable
Type is a media arts installation that consists of 560 small displays that are suspended on wires in two identical arrays. Each array consists of 7 rows and 40 columns of vacuum fluorescent display screens (VFD) measuring 4 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch each. VFDs are an old technology originally developed during the 1960’s in the form of vacuum tubes. Because of their durability, VFDs are still in use today, mainly in cash registers, microwave ovens, and gas pump systems.

Movable Type is essentially a living, breathing organism. The installation is in a constant state of flux, because it reflects the up-to-the-minute production of the news. The installation draws its content from three sources: a live feed from The New York Times, capturing text and data in near real-time as the information is published; the activities and comments of visitors to The Times’ Web site; and the complete Times archive dating back to 1851, all provide input to the work. Patterns and images are also displayed on the system, for example, outline drawings of all 50 states were displayed during our visit.

Movable Type displays fragments such as quotes, details, questions, numbers, and places from The Times’ real-time news database and to combines these fragments into a series of kinetic compositions using algorithms developed by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen. Each display unit also contains an audio interface, a speaker and an audible relay, enabling it to produce a variety of small sounds. Ten small full-range speakers mounted near the floor provide ambient background sounds.

The concept and production was developed and managed
by New York-based media artist Ben Rubin, founder of
EAR Studio Inc, and Mark Hansen, Associate Professor in
the Department of Statistics, University at California at Los Angeles. The design was coordinated with the architects of The New York Times Company building, Renzo Piano in Paris, in association with FXFOWLE Architects in New York.



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