THE MIRAE SQUARE

Communicating with citizens through interactive digital media

Recently local governments are taking cares to create a beautiful exterior at night to improve urban landscape and provide spectacles. To create a night exterior using a variety of lightings gives energy to dark streets and various spectacles. Further, it gives advanced visual spectacles from simple color changes to displaying images and information through various contents recently.

Providing the experience of the cutting edge digital media city

Recently, local governments are proceeding various projects such as sign modifying, public design, creating night exterior, etc. to create beautiful urban landscape. Gyeyang-gu, Incheon City, also started construction of the Mirae square to make Gyeyang-gu of an outstanding streets. The Mirae square project is to expand lack of cultural space and to make the street of the representative for that region. To do this, they cut previous 800m length of 4 lanes to 1 lane of one-way street, and make rest of streets of a pedestrian road.
Gyeyang-gu enhanced streets and sidewalks to make them full of cultural events, and streets where everyone wants to walk. And also they built various sculptures with experts' consultation and created all sorts of cultural event spaces.
For this, Gyeyang-gu remodeled a sport park to secure the square and green belt on the street and gave efforts to construct a premium street connecting with beautiful signs.
The Mirae square is unique that it is comprised of spaces to experience a cutting edge digital city. Gyeyang-gu moved and installed the statues from Global Fair & Festival 2009 Incheon, and give something different chances for citizens to experience the digital city. DaeKyun Jung, an official from Gyeyang-gu district office said "We received statues which installed in Global Fair & Festival 2009 Incheon from Incheon City to give various attractions to citizens."
There are 11 works moved from Global Fair & Festival 2009 Incheon. They are the communication tower with picture device grafted an optical communication, environmental watch, digital media board, intelligent street lights, wind street lights, U bench and so on. A digital media board type gate installed at the entrance of the Mirae square stands out the cutting edge digital city.

Exterior lighting and information at a same time

The gate was fabricated by Gyeyang-gu and has a role as the landmark to symbolize the Mirae square.
They are 8m and 10m high each and shapes are from peaks of Gyeyang mountain. Sign Telecom Inc. has developed contents for each season cooperating with KwangWoon University.
Sign Telecom Inc. said "We've tried to express various images because only one image can't keep people's interests. We've developed 30 of 10 minutes contents, total 300 minutes, representing 4 seasons." So people can see flowers blooming in spring, beach and sea in summer, fallen leaves in autumn and snow in winter.
The gate also transfers information of events or notices from city and districts through the board. The messages can be flowed from the left board to the right board smoothly so, long sentences also can be readable without any problem. The gate is visible on both sides so it gives information to both people coming to the square and those going out.
At the top of the gate, temperature and time are displayed to give effective information to people. Sign Telecom Inc.
said "We provide temperature of the Mirae square's surroundings and internet standard time."

Quality concerned of mass media by developing of various contents

The gate was fabricated with the consideration of quality, exceeding a simple mass media.
Sign Telecom Inc. said "It will be dominant that cutting edge facilities like the gate which is able for interactive communication will be a suitable system for the enhancement of a beautiful urban landscape and scenery. So the development of various contents is very important. We are focusing on not only hardware but also contents plans and idea developments and won't stop developing various contents."
The gate uses about 438 of lamp type RGB full color LED lightings, and average energy consumption is 18kw. For the maintenance, there is an empty space inside of the structure. LED modules can be replaced inside of the structure and a replacement of controller and board is also available. Safety inspection has been made by a building engineer and materials are thicker than other structures for the safety reason.

DMC PUBLIC ART

Fantastic feast of light fragments spreading to 360 degrees

Digital media using all sorts of colors has increased since interest in beautiful urban scenery was high. Starting with media facade on major companies' buildings, there are digital media using lighting on various spots recently, and a digital media sculpture was installed recently in SangAm-dong DMC (Digital Media City) where promising companies related to IT and media move in. Especially, this sculpture is notable by the scale and it is dimensional emitting light to all degrees.

Humanism in collaboration with digital media and analogue

There are many cutting edge intelligent buildings utilizing digital media to media facade and statues in DMC. And in DMC, there are more than 200 IT and media related companies. Digital media works are located here and there on DMC's street displaying mystically fantastic environment but sometimes they give a cold touch because they are less sensitive than analogue.
But digital media sculpture 'THEY' which is located in DMC culture park 2 is a mix of high-tech digital and analogue sensitivity which can give a humanism.
Jinjun Lee, an installation artist who fabricated 'THEY' said "I rather like that humanism should be inside of media.
Digital media works give a touch of fantasy and greatness but actual touch from our heart is weak. I was questioned by myself that 'Have I ever cried from digital media works?' After this, I really wanted to make digital media works that people can feel humanism and touch from them."
Lee proceeded his works applying to both analogue and digital. He made a model of the sculpture with traditional hand-craft, not from blueprints from computer, and fabricated digital sculpture through scanning from 3D machine.
With the size of the sculpture is 14m high and 16m wide, to make the sculpture in real size, Lee fabricated triangle units composing the sculpture in all different sizes and shapes to feel realism and humanism and to give a dimensional touch and detail. Lee said "This is all handcrafted work to make a real human body.
We fabricated 5,800 units of triangle in different sizes and shapes to comprise the sculpture."

360 degree of light emission in excellent beauty

Lee also focused on beauty of the sculpture when he gave a humanism on it.
He tried to maintain dimensional artistic value of the sculpture from all of directions to keep the beauty. Lee said "Not like other sculptures, this doesn't have any specific face from the front. It can be seen from any directions. I've constantly revised the design through simulation so that the workers in the building can feel the beauty because the sculpture is installed in the downtown where skyscrapers are around."
Lee applied lightings to the sculpture to give artistic value regardless day and night and secured artistry as a public art. Most of sculptures use indirect lighting at night and it causes a visual disturbance. 'THEY' uses the direct lighting in it and gives artistic values on day and night.
'THEY' has a shape of hugging couple and it emits light to any angles so people can enjoy the lighting.
Because lighting was applied to dimensional sculpture, there were problems to allot coordinates. Normally, the coordinates are uniform on flat media facade like grid pattern. But 'THEY' has many curves because the shape is human's face so allotment of coordinates on each curves was a challenge for fabricator.

Multi-layered structure with extension panel, tempered glass, etc.

Besides 360 degree light emission, 'THEY' features a dot effect. Generally, shops try to get rid of the dot effect as LED light keeps shooting straight. But 'THEY' purposely has the dot effect to give a dimensional touch while mysterious and fantastic touches are in it.
But if the dot effect is too much, the mysterious touch will be gone and in other way, if the dot effect is too less, dimensional touch will be gone. So interval between LED lighting and optical-spread PC was set in 10~12cm, and 3cm gap between LED modules generates relevant dot effects on the sculpture.
DMX module which performs independently helps each light fragment light fantastic and 32,000 LEDs were used in total. To express sophisticated colors on face, computer program has used. From 6 to 10 o'clock, red, white, yellow, black and blue color lights are displayed with effects like dimming and searchlight. Flash movie and letter flow will be updated soon.
From the consideration of durability,
multi-layered structure was chosen for the sculpture on the basis of LED, steel panel, extension panel and tempered glass. It took much time to set up the structure's gap and thickness such as gap between LED and optical-spread PC or tempered glass because the sculpture has many curves.
Also the fabricator had to solve a heat problem from the multi-layered structure.
For the first time, they installed fans for internal air ventilation but removed it because of noises. Now, gravels with 50cm width around the sculpture help air circulation to emit heat.