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Alicia Keys Lights Up Empire State Building with LED Lighting and HIPPOTIZER Media Servers

Alicia Keys flips the switch for the Empire State Building’s new LED lighting.

New York, NY, USA — Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys helped launch the Empire State Building’s (ESB’s) new LED lighting system on 26 November 2012. The landmark building’s first-ever video LED light show, designed by world renowned designer Marc Brickman, is driven by HIPPOTIZER media servers controlled by GrandMA2.

Outputting KiNet to the ESB’s recently installed LED lighting network, six Hippo HDs drive 11,500 pixel-mapped DMX channels to four types of 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 show, visible throughout the city and surrounding areas, ran in conjunction with a rooftop performance by Alicia Keys, on a neighboring building as she introduced her new “Girl on Fire “ album.

The pixel-mapping for this show represents a unique development: In a typical pixel-map, fixtures are visible and are viewed and mapped in their real-world locations. In this ESB show, the fixtures are not visible, instead they are viewed and mapped where they throw onto the building, turning the individual illuminated areas of the building into multiple video pixels, and expanding each pixel to HUGE proportions. This effect is 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.

Read more about Hippotizer at www.tmb.com/products/hippotizer
Joe Kleiman
Joe Kleimanhttp://wwww.themedreality.com
Raised in San Diego on theme parks, zoos, and IMAX films, InPark's Senior Correspondent Joe Kleiman would expand his childhood loves into two decades as a projectionist and theater director within the giant screen industry. In addition to his work in commercial and museum operations, Joe has volunteered his time to animal husbandry at leading facilities in California and Texas and has played a leading management role for a number of performing arts companies. Joe previously served as News Editor and has remained a contributing author to InPark Magazine since 2011. HIs writing has also appeared in Sound & Communications, LF Examiner, Jim Hill Media, The Planetarian, Behind the Thrills, and MiceChat His blog, ThemedReality.com takes an unconventional look at the attractions industry. Follow on twitter @ThemesRenewed Joe lives in Sacramento, California with his wife, dog, and a ghost.

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