It feels like the end of something, putting this prototype in place. Or a beginning. Both, really. We’ve been focused on getting the engineering right from very early on, and seeing what Toby and Tuur have achieved with this installation is amazing: it’s sleek, it’s solid, it’s.. well, it’s beautiful. We’ve come a long way to get here, and we’re now less than 6 months away from installing these all over London. We’ve of course been working on all of the other bits you might expect: how we work with artists, how we work with educators, how we reach and inspire people to create work and foster a sense of ownership of their local installation. Those processes now really begin in earnest, with us gathering the partners we’ve been building friendships and relationships with to launch with the proverbial bang come January 1st 2012.

The prototype is pretty darn close to what the finished item is going to be like, though there are elements that will certainly change - the computing solution for instance is a bit niggley. It’s not stable enough, really, and we’re working with windows due to the proprietary L.E.D software which is non-ideal, but IT WORKS, oh yes it does. The system currently looks at the server once an hour to see if there’s new content, pulls it down in a 7zip format and then runs it through the onboard L.E.D software before piping it to the screen. It uses a 3G dongle, though it first looks for a BTOpenzone/BTFon connection and will use that instead if it can. You will notice our use of timber as the enclosure. If you haven’t seen much about the project yet, here’s a post about our use of London Plane, and here’s a video showing it’s processing for use. There’s also more about it covered in the summary document over on Gdocs.

This prototype does not currently have the sensors in place (temp sensor yes, but not webcam and piezo rain sensor), but we’ll install those soon and think about how best to use them. The thing about the sensors is that though the installation is *queryable*, strictly speaking, it’s not real-time. We’re still really thinking through what these ambient sensors properly bring to the installations; are they a bit of ambient flavour only? Do they provide something which can be of artistic utility?

There’s something about these photographs that make me look at the prototype in a totally different way, I realise. Whilst we’ve had the prototype on a shelter roof in the working space at Trueform Engineering, it hasn’t been *in place*. Seeing it here properly installed it just seems *right*. It fits. It looks natural, as though it belongs there. Perhaps this is just my bias and acceptance of it as an object through being so close to it, but I hope that that sense is a True one, and others feel it too.

I think the images in this gallery really speak for themselves, so I’ll leave it there. Oh, here’s a Summary Document of the project (a short one) if you’re interested.