Sitting in the office with Matt, Tuur and Toby, bathed in the brothel-like radiance of the red LED prototype, I realise we haven’t really spoken about what we’ve been up to lately. Prototyping has been steady and effective, resulting in greater use of London Plane in the enclosure and a slightly reduced aspect ratio of the screen (256cmx80cm, almost 3.2:1 letterboxy). We love the aspect ratio because really it’s the aspect ratio of a Bus Shelter, uniquely.

Through testing with mostly photographs and some video (currently video at between 8 and 12.5fps is feasible) it’s become clear that artists hoping that their existing work might be easily retro-fitted to the screens will be disappointed; the screens really invite work specifically created for them. Not only of course because of the unique aspect ratio, but in each screen’s relationship to Place. If you haven’t seen it already there is a site that James made for us letting anyone in London select where they would like us to install Bus-Tops. So there is this implicit relationship that each installation has to it’s location, and the work it displays fulfils that relationship. Ideally.

We’ve been experimenting with diffusion materials. Obviously the LED’s need to be covered by some opaque material, PC most probably as it’s more impact/shatter-proof than vinyl, whilst also doing the job of diffusing the pixel pitch of the screens. We’ve done some experiments which produce some quite beautiful results but we’re still playing with materials. The upshot is that almost certainly there will be a level of opacity introduced through the PC diffusing the LED effect,giving a softer and more organic rendering of displayed work.

We’ve been building the Linux solution that will handle all the sensor stuff (2 x temperature sensors, 2 x microphones, 1 x webcam, 1 x rain sensor) and the compression/decompression of ‘Playbill’ content that gets piped to each screen. We’ve decided on a Sheeva plug to handle most everything, along with off the rack peripherals for the sensors (aside from the rain sensor which is basically a mic and a pizoelectric sensor), thanks Andy for making time to come and help us define a solution.

So that brings us to the point where we start looking at decompiling the Windows software that ships with the LED solution we’ve sourced from China. We’ve just started talking to someone who isn’t utterly repelled by Visual Studio and has the sort of chops we need (Thanks Joel and Pete for the hook-up!). Following from that we will build a web-accessible emulator and start PlaYinG about with it. That neatly brings us to software development, which we hope to start in December/January. Paula and I are going to start speccing and wireframing an initial build soon so hopefully that will segue with the software dev on the screen-side so we can develop both in tandem.

On the prototyping front, we will soon be installing a prototype on what London Buses call a “Dead Stop” to test angle of inclination and the effect of direct sunlight (though damn the light output on these things is something fierce). TFL, specifically Ivan Bennett at TFL Surface Transport, have been absolutely amazing in helping us throughout this process, as have Trueform so massive thanks to them for being so open and available to us. We’ve made a nice, short, simple and succinct doc which gives a good account of where the project is right now: Bus-Tops Overview Nov ‘10

So I think that’s about it for now. Oh! Artists and stuff. We’ve had a lot of artists asking about how and when they can get involved and unfortunately the answer is still ‘not right now’. We need to build at least the emulator first and produce a document which outlines the constraints of the screens and their overall context related to Place. I do however think that we’ll be able to start having something meaningful to show and talk about with people wanting to create work for the platform soon: January realistically.

Alfie.