Massive New 'Salesforce Tower' Light Sculpture: AI, Ubuntu, Fog, and a MacBook (ieee.org) 63
The new tallest building on the San Francisco skyline -- and the tallest building in America west of the Mississippi -- includes a nine-story electronic sculpture that's been called the tallest piece of public art on Earth. It uses 11,000 LED bulbs reflected off the tower-topping aluminum panels -- each pixel created by a set of red, green, blue and white lights controlled by 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. "On a clear night, the show is visible for 30 miles," reports IEEE Spectrum.
Slashdot reader Tekla Perry shares their article about "the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. Electrical engineer and artist Jim Campbell explains it all -- and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year." "[O]n the 62nd floor, a central PC-based computer runs Ubuntu Linux, sending instructions to a communications control system that splits the data and sends it at 11 Mbit to the 32 enclosures using a custom communications protocol... We will capture images throughout the day, sending them to Amazon's cloud, and run some algorithms designed to identify visual interesting-ness. For example, at its simplest, when we look at the sky, if it's all blue, it's boring, if it's all white, it's boring, if it has white and blue it is likely to be interesting. We'll chose the best half hour of the day at each camera, based on movement and color, to display...."
And finally, when the main display shuts down late at night, another system designed by Campbell will kick in. In this static display, a set of 36 white LEDs will create a three-dimensional constellation of lights that will look like stars. "It's quieter, it has a random aspect to it," he says.
"Since construction started, the tower has emerged as an icon of the new San Francisco -- techie, ambitious, perhaps a little grandiose," writes the New Yorker, capturing the moment when Campbell finally unveiled his four-year project -- while fighting stomach flu and a chest cold, on a night which turned out to be prohibitively foggy. The executive vice-president of Boston Properties told him cheerily, "Jim! Look on the brighter side. We've got every night for the rest of our lives."
"There was a long silence from the people on the terrace. The fog was thick. At last, someone exclaimed, 'Woo-hoo!,' and a volley of cheers followed." Although the colors they were seeing came from the celebratory fireworks and not from Jim's light sculpture.
Are there any San Francisco-area Slashdotters who want to weigh in on the Salesforce Tower?
Slashdot reader Tekla Perry shares their article about "the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. Electrical engineer and artist Jim Campbell explains it all -- and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year." "[O]n the 62nd floor, a central PC-based computer runs Ubuntu Linux, sending instructions to a communications control system that splits the data and sends it at 11 Mbit to the 32 enclosures using a custom communications protocol... We will capture images throughout the day, sending them to Amazon's cloud, and run some algorithms designed to identify visual interesting-ness. For example, at its simplest, when we look at the sky, if it's all blue, it's boring, if it's all white, it's boring, if it has white and blue it is likely to be interesting. We'll chose the best half hour of the day at each camera, based on movement and color, to display...."
And finally, when the main display shuts down late at night, another system designed by Campbell will kick in. In this static display, a set of 36 white LEDs will create a three-dimensional constellation of lights that will look like stars. "It's quieter, it has a random aspect to it," he says.
"Since construction started, the tower has emerged as an icon of the new San Francisco -- techie, ambitious, perhaps a little grandiose," writes the New Yorker, capturing the moment when Campbell finally unveiled his four-year project -- while fighting stomach flu and a chest cold, on a night which turned out to be prohibitively foggy. The executive vice-president of Boston Properties told him cheerily, "Jim! Look on the brighter side. We've got every night for the rest of our lives."
"There was a long silence from the people on the terrace. The fog was thick. At last, someone exclaimed, 'Woo-hoo!,' and a volley of cheers followed." Although the colors they were seeing came from the celebratory fireworks and not from Jim's light sculpture.
Are there any San Francisco-area Slashdotters who want to weigh in on the Salesforce Tower?
... “and a MacBook”? (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume there’s a MacBook mentioned somewhere, but it’s certainly not in this summary. So if it’s not important enough for the summary, why put it in the title?
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From the New Yorker article:
That's the only appearance of it. Completely not-interesting. Could have just used the word "laptop" just as well, but we gotta get an Apple mention in there somewhere to drive traffic.
Re:... “and a MacBook”? (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds like the beginning of the gayest Letter to Penthouse ever.
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That sounds like the beginning of the gayest Letter to Penthouse ever.
...
Re: Not very environmentally friendly? (Score:2)
Screw that light pollution. The stars are much more interesting to see.
Not on average (Score:2)
Stuff as pointless and wasteful as this is usually what we start to see just before a spectacular financial collapse.
Check out Hong Kong, or Bejing, or Shanghai sometime - they have many things like this, and have for years. They have been fine.
This kind of stuff is not really a sign of financial excess, more a sign of how things like this are becoming cheaper and cheaper for companies to add to buildings for decoration.
Also putting up a huge display may seem expensive but there are cost savings from havin
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Also putting up a huge display may seem expensive but there are cost savings from having a large area with no windows - cheaper heating/cooling bills for the building as a whole.
But you can do that without putting big displays on the building, so you get your "cheaper heating/cooling bills" and then also don't have the expense of the displays.
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Stuff as pointless and wasteful as this is usually what we start to see just before a spectacular financial collapse.
Good rule of thumb: Whenever a company pays millions for the "naming rights" to a stadium or sports area, you should short their stock.
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See the stars? San Francisco? There seems to be some sort of fundamental conceptual misunderstanding here.
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You can't see stars in major cities anyway, may as well have a pretty night skyline. Many nights the sky has a constant orange glow.
When I moved to my non-major city I freaked out the first time I looked up at night from a random street with no streetlights and saw stars... it took me a few seconds to realize what they were. I don't think I'd ever noticed stars (aside from the sun) in person until that moment, which was after I could legally drink. Makes me wonder how many people have never seen them "li
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You'd never been out of a city your entire life, at night time?
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I had but was always curfued indoors at night, or in college and too busy doing schoolwork at night. I'd also been to northern NJ but light pollution doesn't respect political boundaries. So finally it was walking home from the bus from work that got me to look up and see the awesomeness of the true night sky.
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It's wierd, isn't it? I grew up in a small town (~3000 ppl) and grew up looking at the sky. Then I moved 'north of 60' and was gobsmacked by the northern lights. Then I moved to the Caribbean and stared at the 'bathtub moon' ("I thought those were only in cartoons or the movies!"
Then I moved to Toronto, and missed the sky. I'd go out camping for the pure benefit of being able to see my childhood friends again.
Many of my friends had grown up in Toronto and never left. "Why would I, the city has everythi
Re: PIC? Seriously? (Score:2)
Lots of people use PIC parts. Technically, there was a huge boost in usage a few years ago when Microchip bought Atmel.
They're peripheral components.
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Wow! A new derivative "AMD vs. Intel" style tussle we can get into.
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Uninspired is right. I interviewed at their location in Bellevue, WA (former HQ of Microsoft and the current HQ of Expedia is a block south) a few months ago, and I think all of the interviewers mentioned their "Mindfulness Zone." Sounds like pandering to millennials. My passion in tech is making things simpler and faster for users. They instead talked about grand ideas and the importance of doing things differently from everyone else. They sent me a rejection by email saying they didn't think I woul
Yeah... (Score:2)
I'm going to say that Salesforce is over-charging.
not public art (Score:2)
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.
They are The Advertisers and they are laugh
GDPR effects. (Score:2)
Can we in Europe take a moment to appreciate the application of GDPR here. The popup gives a of 10 cookies, broken up into editorial, content personalisation, and analytics, along with them a link to the privacy policy of each company.
By default only the analytics ones are ticked, and unlike many other sites which missed the point of the GDPR the site continues to function if you untick them and it doesn't appear to try and load the cookies if you don't tick the box.
The only problem really is that I don't r
Re: GDPR effects. (Score:1)
If Europeans like you don't like how non-European websites operate, then maybe you just shouldn't use them. Retract into your shell if you cannot handle the world around you.
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Second Tallest West of the Mississippi (Score:1)
Wikipedia says the Wilshire Grand Center in LA is 29 feet taller than the Salesforce Tower. The article only claims, "the tallest building, floor to roof, west of the Mississippi River."
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And the people bowed and prayed... (Score:5, Insightful)
To the neon Gods they made.
sounds like a potent source (Score:2)
of light pollution.
and, btw, get the hell off my lawn!
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My name is salesforce.com, King of Kings, (Score:2)
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Youtube clip is charming (Score:2)
I currently live in Hong Kong, several skyscrapers do a bit of a lightshow and the tallest building (ICC) also features beautiful evening animations over its height, but they are monochrome.
Most local people and visitors like these animations and light shows, quite different from the soul crushing negativity one again on display here.
Salesforce Tower damages the beauty of SF (Score:1)
I am local (across the bay) and I can tell you that the Salesforce Tower sticks out like a sore thumb. Arrogant egotistic overkill. I have not met anyone that likes the way it transforms the look of beautiful San Francisco. SF used to have a very strong preservationist city hall; I guess the last decade or two have seen them become hypnotized by the tech money. Too bad, that ugly thing is there to stay. And the light show ("art" ha ha) at the top is going be pouring salt on the wound. Creepy.
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I agree, it's sorta ugly but time will tell. It's really just kind of a plain chrome-like building, when viewed from afar. And you can see it from afar from every corner of the city. It's well south of most of the other highrises in the city so it's more viewable from places where you can't see, say, the TransAmerica Pyramid (central/western parts of town.) As more buildings get built in that area it should blend in more with the flow of the city, instead of jutting out of it like a hangnail like it does no
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Using obsolete and insecure WiFi protocols? (Score:2)
Get cracking...