generative media art — mall

Marseille & Orly — Retail Media

Generative Digital Signage

Marseille & Orly — Retail Media

— Bring infinite contents to large-scale displays in public space

The public space today is marked by the presence of large-scale displays bringing informations or emotional content to the public moving in places such as malls, lobbies or streets. In order to shift from the classic video content, and its repetitive behavior, to an infinite evolving content, we conceived a custom digital signage system allowing the display of real-time generative visuals along with informative video contents.

Used in two french malls, this system broadcasts content on large-scale 3, 6 and 9 meters height. Each content is custom made based on the mall, its universe, brand identity or location. The system works with a scheduler, the brand can plan video content based on major highlights such as Christmas or Mother’s day, for example. The generative visual can be purely emotion based, such as universes evolving with different colours and lightings, particles simulation, morphed shapes, curved shapes using 2D or 3D. It can also be based on data such as location, crowds or data APIs.

For a coastal based mall, we conceived three data art pieces inspired by the sea and based on a real-time weather forecast. The first scene displays a school of fish moving according to the luminosity of the day. The second piece shows the flow of the water based on the wind direction and speed. Then the third one shows flow curls based on the temperature and atmospheric pressure of the day.

concept sketches

Each generative scene combines various techniques and algorithms to create a unique real-time scene such as flocking behavior, fluid simulation or GPU curled mesh animation. By using generative techniques, we create a large number of animated graphic iterations allowing us to explore various forms and graphic environments for each of them.

early GPU fluid iteration
curl shapes iterations generated using a GPU algorithm

The final system combines two engines, a custom made 3D engine for GPU simulation, allowing the animation of a large number of generative elements, and Unity3D, a game engine allowing us to use figurative shapes and more advanced lighting techniques.

The full system is managed by a high performance computer in order to broadcast high-end graphics to multiple screens at the same time. The whole architecture can be managed from anywhere via an Internet connection.

Commissioned by:
Retail Media
Role:
Concept, Creative Direction, Design and Development

Sorry, but this website is optimized for landscape orientation on tablets.

Sorry, but this website is optimized for portrait orientation on smartphones.

Please switch your device orientation to continue.