Carnegie Mellon University: The 230-foot-long Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge is a well-trod connection between the Gates Center for Computer Science and the Purnell Center for the Arts. It's also a symbol of the collaborative, creative spirit of the late Carnegie Mellon University professor and alumnus. Now, two years after its dedication, the span with more than 7,000 programmable LED lights has become a unique teaching resource as well.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Light as Art
Carnegie Mellon University: The 230-foot-long Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge is a well-trod connection between the Gates Center for Computer Science and the Purnell Center for the Arts. It's also a symbol of the collaborative, creative spirit of the late Carnegie Mellon University professor and alumnus. Now, two years after its dedication, the span with more than 7,000 programmable LED lights has become a unique teaching resource as well.
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I have always found the bridge to be an inspiring monument to the collaboration that exists between the arts and technology here at CMU. The light shows that have been programmed for it up to today have usually been interesting to watch at night, but I am excited to see what the new sequences look like. I have always been a fan of artwork that is interactive, and I'm impressed that the new programming will allow the bridge to respond dynamically to external data, rather than simply going through pre-recorded sequences. I'm curious how the bridge will perform the "Fusion" sequence. Wouldn't actually tracking people as they walk across the bridge require the installation of proximity sensors along its length? Does anyone know what method is being used to track users of the bridge as they walk across?
The proximity sensors are actually already built into the bridge. It's just getting them to work (and they're feisty buggers) is the challenge for that group.
I really appreciate how this class is opening up the ability to work with the software for the Pausch Bridge and interact with an art piece that has become an iconic monument (Will's word is right) for CMU. Randy would appreciate the collaboration of CS and Drama students, much as he and Jesse Schell first partnered up to start the ETC, working together to create new shows with an emphasis on engaging the viewer as a participant in the creation of the piece. All of the designs take the Pausch Bridge lighting designs, which while beautiful are rather static over 2 years of play, and throw them on their head by introducing an element of outside influence, whether the weather, viewer movement or tweets.
I didn't work this into my schedule this semester, but am certainly aiming to take the course in the future. Working collaboratively with those outside the walls of Purnell is certainly living in the spirit of Randy. I have to agree that creating new designs to display with the bridge will help keep this memorial alive and eye catching to the members of campus, and those that stop by. Keeping this bridge fresh and alive seems like a wonderful to remember Randy, using this is a consistent future teaching tool for collaboration.
I was in this class and made one of these shows and the class is a great concept for the exception that it should be the inter semester and be more units. After the 3 to 4 week introduction to the things that we would be working with, we got to start to program things offline and not loading on to the bridge for another 2 weeks and once we tried to do that we ran into problem s before we got online 3 weeks before the project was due and was hard to get a show done. I hope in the future of the class they do more things to get online faster and working. Also do more things with sensors in the future I hope the best to the next group that goes thought the class.
@Will: The tracking for Fusion (my group) is done with a high resolution low light camera that has been installed on the 7th floor of gates, you can see it when you are walking towards gates. The images has been pixel mapped to know which pixels correspond to segments on the bridge. Regarding Brian's comment there are no proximity sensors on the bridge, we initially looked into installing some but the cost and infrastructure was too great so we went with a camera. The whole system was written in processing by one of the CS students in our group, it doesn't work terribly well because of bureaucracy we didn't get the camera until late in the game and then it was kind of finicky
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