CBS’s Boston-based 24 hour streaming news service has gone live with our bright and bold new set. The fresh look includes white walls with lit reveal lines, frosted backlit panels with additional horizontal banding, and angled wall segments with integrated lighting accents.
We love our work and find it imperative to explore art and design in the world around us. So, every so often we unplug from our desks, leave the office, and take a team “ClickTrip” to expand our creative horizons. We believe that exploring exhibitions, lectures, events, and installations ultimately helps shape our design work – and ourselves. This week, our New York office visited Artechouse to examine its inaugural exhibition, Machine Hallucination by Refik Anadol.
In Machine Hallucination, Anadol uses over 300 million images from a comprehensive range of architectural styles and time periods to show hidden connections between moments in history. The algorithm used to connect these moments creates an experience where memory and recognition of New York’s most well known buildings are reformed to interact in a “fluid consciousness,” thus intertwining the city’s architectural past, present, and future. Machine Hallucination overwhelms the viewer in a cinematic, yet dizzily disorienting experience, to show how artificial intelligence can interact with photography to help us realize the complex fabric that unfolds our present realities.
Check out some images taken by our team below! And to really see the space in action head over to our instagram video posts. Prepare to be mesmerized!
You can visit Machine Hallucination in the Chelsea Market Digital Art Space.
Many thanks to Clickspring designers Christine de Witte, Murat Ustuner, Donna Lee, and Kendra James for lending their photos and videos of the event!
We helped Tencent Sports transform a former industrial grain silo into a state of the art facility for sports broadcasting. Check out the project in our portfolio section to see how we integrated technology into scenic elements that lend impressive versatility to a challenging studio environment.
What happens when we combine our love for New York City with our appetite for design? Giving back to our local creative community, of course!
When we heard the Actors Theatre Workshop needed volunteers we thought, “it’s about time!”
Gabby excitedly primes walls!
On July 27th, designers Tristan and Gabby spent their Saturday helping renovate the Actors Theater Workshop (ATW) in Chelsea. Since many of our staff have theatre and set building backgrounds, spending the afternoon lending a hand was right up our alley.
The Actors Theatre Workshop is an award-winning non-profit theatre, community center, and educational institution that teaches innovative educational techniques and theatre principles to adults and children from all walks of life. As founder Thurman E. Scott sees it, creativity is a great equalizer because we all have the potential to create, which may lead to personal and professional development through creative training and community service.
Tristan and Gabby spent their afternoon painting and working on design layout plans for how to best use the space where they house workshops, acting classes, and community events. Here, members, volunteers, and participants get an opportunity to focus on dramatic works that examine the social issues of today.
ATW wants the community to utilize their skills, heart, and commitment to change people’s lives. We were very glad to be part of this afternoon and can’t wait to do it again. If you want to get involved with Actors Theater Workshop, check out their website!
With an office in the heart of SEC football territory, this project was a special one for us. We recently helped ESPN relaunch the SEC Network with not one but three unique spaces covering the network’s entire broadcast day. From the nightly news program “SEC Now” to talker “Marty & McGee,” we’re proud to have helped!
“On Air” is an internally produced series of staff interviews that showcase the talent and personalities of the people who keep Clickspring ticking. Our fourth installment features two conversations with our summer 2019 interns: Gabby Li in the New York office, as well as Anna Henry and Jacob T. Middleton in the Austin office. Check out our conversations about their studies, interests, and extremely relevant theoretical exercises involving ducks.
First up we have a conversation with Gabby Li in the New York office, who studies Environmental & Interior Design student at Syracuse University:
CSD: Okay, so let’s jump in! You have a unique background! What made you think about Clickspring?
GL: I was attracted to CSD’s unique assembly of talented people; I love the idea of people from different backgrounds contributing to a project together and learning from each other. I am also very interested in finding out how my skill set may contribute to broadcast set design, as it is something completely different from what I have been introduced to.
Gabby Li
CSD: And you just studied abroad in London and you’re from Beijing. We’re very glad you get our love for collaboration. Now onto the important stuff. Would you rather fight one horse sized duck or a hundred duck sized horses?
GL: Horse-sized duck. The smaller horses will be too cute to fight. The giant duck will just be like an ostrich, and I’ve always wanted to conquer one, it will make a cool ride if I succeed in taming it.
CSD: Can you elaborate on this?
GL: Because it can run pretty fast, it can keep me warm and comfortable, it can live off of veggies, it can scare off predators with an impressive wing span, and most importantly, it will be my non-rubber duck floaty, and take me off a deserted island when I’d like to leave.
CSD: Touché. What were you most excited about when you started your internship?
GL: I was really excited to learn Cinema 4D and Clickspring’s approach for set design including consideration for cameras, lighting, and functionality.
CSD: Light, Cameras, Functionality! I think we may have just found our new tag line.
Next, we have a chat in our Austin office with Jacob T. Middleton and Anna Henry, who are in the undergraduate architecture and interior design programs at The University of Texas at Austin.
CSD: Longhorns, assemble!
Jacob T. Middleton
AH + JM: … hi.
CSD: So. Let’s get the flattery out of the way…why an interest in Clickspring?
AH: I was attracted to the unique scope and range of people and projects that make up Clickspring, and I have always been attracted the idea of creating an experience for people. The use of technology and lighting in Clickspring’s projects also really caught my eye.
JM: I have a background in theatrical design that led me to architecture, and Clickspring seemed like a place where I could combine these two passions.
CSD: Do you have any favorite architects?
AH: I am very interested in Petra Blaisse. She has been able to intersect fashion, art, interior design/architecture, and landscape design, connecting the outside an inside and exploring textiles, light, and finishes. These are all things that I take interest in and I would love to be able to mix my passions with my career.
JM: John Hejduk. His architecture transformed recognizable and mundane geometries into forms that were alien and avant-garde. His portfolio of work looks like a postmodern hellscape and that’s kind of iconic. Also, he was a Texas Ranger, which is badass.
Anna Henry
CSD: Badass, indeed. Who’s your favorite fictional character?
AH: Ariel from the little mermaid, because she’s a mermaid, and mermaids are cool.
JM: Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars because he knows how to drive.
CSD: You don’t know how to drive?
JM: No, I ride the bus to work for fun.
CSD: Okay! Last question! What did you enjoy learning about most during your summer here?
JM: I loved learning how an architectural skill set can be utilized to perform tasks outside of traditional “architecture.”
AH: I’m glad I improved my drafting skills and how adesign is assembled and comes to life through that process. I’ve also enjoyed learning how Clickspring approaches design challenges that come with broadcast design in general.
The second round of the Democratic primary debates are in the books. Hosted by CNN in Detroit, Michigan, Clickspring’s scenic design featured an expansive LED backdrop, a circular space-frame truss illuminated with stars and suspended above the stage at an angle, and restrained, minimal podiums illuminated with a frosted, light box gradient.
Stage design for the debates is challenging due to the many shot requirements as well as variability in number of candidates and show format. In addition, the set has to work for different venues, unknown at the time of the initial design, and be installed and show-ready in a three-day period. That being said, the energy and pressure of the live event are what make it a special experience.
Our goal with the design was to provide NBC maximum flexibility of background content, by using LED tile, without the set becoming just a big boring video screen. The White House, and in particular the architectural front elevation of the building, gives the set an iconic quality while reminding us of the stakes for the campaign. Trends dictate that the set has to be contemporary both in style and technology, but it was important to us to infuse the concept with a bit of tradition and class, while touching on the theme of transparency.
Design is a collective process and NBC put together a great team for this one. Senior Design Director Kendra James collaborated closely with me on the design, with myriad contributions from our entire CSD internal team. Steve and Niel’s lighting (LDG) really gave the set its depth and richness, and Ben Jacobsen’s (Mystic Scenic) engineering of the build was both smart and true to our design intent.
We’re honored to celebrate the arrival of another NewscastStudio Set of the Year trophy! Our design for MBN Alhurra took top honors in the “International” category. This futuristic, curvilinear environment made use of immersive LED “portals” to shape the way Alhurra delivers news.
Nothing feels better than landing a cover feature! Our work for MBN Alhurra received a beautiful write-up in this February’s BroadcastPro Middle East.
“The first thing that catches your eye as you walk into Alhurra TV’s brand-new TV facility in Dubai Media City is the vast sense of space. Although the facility has a low ceiling, the curved design of the sets, the oval rotating floors and the studio furniture create the illusion of an infinitely larger space. But an aesthetic studio space that can accommodate two sets with multiple configurations alongside an augmented reality (AR) set-up are only a few of the many elements that make the new Alhurra TV facility in Dubai impressive.”
