2,000 Sq. Ft. Of Gorgeous Visualized Data About To Go Live At Charlotte, NC’s Airport

July 17, 2018 by Dave Haynes

A nine-gate, $200 million addition to Charlotte Douglas Airport, in North Carolina, opens tomorrow morning, with a main feature being some 2,000 sq. ft. of visualized data on several vast fine-pitch LED video walls.

The data visuals are the focal point of a public art piece, called Interconnected, commissioned by the airport to LA data artist Refik Anadol, the guy behind that crazy three-dimensional art piece on a lobby LED wall in a main Salesforce office block in San Francisco.

The abstract visuals for the piece are driven by data from global and regional air-traffic tracking software, airline flight information, baggage handling systems and parking and ground shuttle transportation throughout the airport campus.

The video walls are all Nanolumens product – a 140 foot wide that uses 2mm LED pitch and and 40-foot diagonal ones that are 4mm pixel pitch. The artwork is synchronized across the three and there are three “distinct visual chapters”:

The visuals are real-time and designed to reflect the kinetic nature of an airport that serves more than 44.4 million travellers annually.  

Love this for a couple of reasons.

1 – The visuals are gorgeous, even though virtually everyone looking at them won’t know how they’re data-driven.

2 – Visualized data means there is just a one-time investment required for creative. With a lot of video walls, the big investments go into the capital cost and then the initial creative for the screens. But what often gets overlooked or under-appreciated (and budgeted) is the need to keep that content refreshed. With this set-up, data steadily refreshes the creative, with no human intervention.

This should win some awards.

  1. We are so proud to be associated with Refik and cenero on this beautiful project. This is the future of art for public spaces.

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