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Scharff Weisberg Installs Media Artwork Along Minneapolis Light Rail System
January 19, 2005 — New York
Public artist Janet Zweig recently contracted Scharff Weisberg to design and engineer the AV system and control interface for an interactive public art project, "Small Kindnesses, Weather Permitting." The project is installed at 11 stations on the Hiawatha Line, Minneapolis's new light rail system, the latest addition to the MetroTransit's public transit system.
The installation consists of three or four small kiosks per station for a total of 39. There are 11 different kiosk designs: seven audio designs and four video designs. Each unit has a mechanical initiator (like a hand crank, push button or lever) and a digital output -- either audio only or video with audio. Designs include a windshield wiper (activated by an external handle which in turn activates a video to play), doorbell (ring the bell which activates a sensor to play a video), telephone (pick up the receiver to activate the next audio segment in the queue), revolving snow-globe (turn it upside down to activate a sensor), pinball game (pull the handle, release the ball and a sensor is activated), and yank (The plaque says "Yank the handle. Thanks!" Pull down on the external handle to activate a sensor). Each unit is weatherproofed, protected behind tamperproof glass and enclosed in a steel box attached to a station column. The LCD monitors are heated to stand up against the cold Minnesota winter.
Last winter Zweig held a competition for Minnesota filmmakers, videographers, singers, storytellers, comics, poets, and others to provide kiosk content on the themes of weather or courtesy, the two clichés about Minnesota, a cold but nice state. As a result of Zweig's open competition and ongoing solicitation of talent via arts professionals in Minnesota, some 114 audio recordings and 78 videos made by more 100 Minnesotans were selected for the project. The clips last from 30 seconds to three minutes and range from the comedic to the serious, from professional to amateur quality. On an ongoing basis, this content is delivered to the 39 kiosks and activated when someone on the platform activates the mechanical initiator. All content goes to every kiosk, providing commuters with constantly varying artwork while they wait for their trains.
Zweig has a history of creating interesting work. In the '90s, she made quite conceptual computer-based sculpture with physical and mechanical elements. For the past nine years she has been making public art. "The main difference with this project and my previous work is that formerly I had digital information drive a mechanical object," she explains. "For this piece, the mechanical drives the digital: You interact with something physically and then something digital results."
The installation's audio/video system was engineered by Scharff Weisberg with industrial design and fabrication by ParallelDevelopment, Ltd. of Brooklyn and installation and on-site augmentation by Steven Johnson of Rainville-Carlson, Inc., Minneapolis.
"Scharff Weisberg was brought in to develop a system for making the whole thing work," says Zweig. "This project could not have happened without them. From the beginning, Josh (Weisberg) gave me a lot of advice. Then Josh, Barry Grossman and Ghazal Walker set up brilliant system that considers so many needs, such as LCD heaters and anti-reflective glass among many other things."
"The heart and brains of the system is an ‘encoder' -- a custom interface designed, engineered and manufactured by Scharff Weisberg," comments Barry Grossman. Michael Alex Stengle did the base design and engineering of the encoder, and Ghazal Walker did the final programming and tweaking of the encoder design. "The encoder receives a signal from the kiosk and triggers the appropriate player to activate the next clip," Grossman continues. "Each encodercontrols one video player and up to two audio players." Each kiosk also has a decoderdesigned, engineered and manufactured by Scharff Weisberg.
"For the project we used Minneapolis's own Visual Circuits -- manufacturer of the Firefly SC hard-disk video player -- which provided the video playback," Grossman adds. "We decided to partner with a local vendor instead of using a company from outside the area." The audio player is manufactured by Quadravox. LCD panels are from Marshall Electronics.
"There were many obstacles in this project," Zweig notes. "Initially MetroTransit told us it could all work off their existing electric and fiber optic circuits. Then it turned out that itcouldn't. What was great about Scharff Weisberg was that faced with such a roadblock, they just thought of another way to do it. They were always willing to step back and come up with very unique solutions for very difficult problems. I can't say enough about what a pleasure it was to work with Josh, Barry and Ghazal. This project wouldn't have happened without them."
Scharff Weisberg is located 36-36 33rd Street Long Island City, NY 11106-2128. For more information, call 212-582-2345.