Plantronics Interactive History Wall

In this project, Plantronics, the leading manufacturer of headset microphones and other audio devices, wanted to replace their existing static physical corporate history exhibit with a digital interactive as part of their executive briefing center remodel.

The resulting project was a seven-screen interactive touch wall where each screen represented a decade of the companies history, with an additional screen for current events and signage. Users could interact with each screen to see notable moments in each decade by viewing images, video, and listening to audio files related to those moments. An important facet of the applications was the overall visual design, which was intended to echo audio waveforms, planets (Plantronics started as an aerospace company providing headsets to the Apollo missions), and audio equipment. As a result, many of the interface elements were built around circular UI which presented their own technical and design challenges.

This project has been one of my more involved technical achievements. The system is built from several subsystems; rendering, input, audio, and synchronization. All of these systems were built as OpenFrameworks applications and ran across 4 separate computers - three for rendering and another for all other functions. There was a fifth computer that hosted a CMS and media processing capabilities. Notable features included deterministic synchronization using the Most Pixels Ever synchronization framework, UI drawing via parameterized GLSL shaders, and a GPU accelerated background particle simulation. The rendering application also involved significant modifications to OpenFrameworks video and audio playback subsystems.

The system proved quite successful and was well received by the client.