“Located at one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco’s Financial District, the 43-story tower at 44 Montgomery Street needed a lobby as bright and dynamic as the tenants that pass through it.

ESI designed a media installation for the lobby that reacts to the movement of passersby, making the space feel spacious and alive. The media is driven by a suite of sensors that tracks visitors as they move through the lobby. As people walk to/from the elevator bays, they become digital paintbrushes, trailing a colored path across the display. As more and more people fill the lobby, the media fills with brushstrokes, becoming more colorful and dynamic.”

-ESI Design

I configured the blob tracking system that sends the x coordinates of people moving through the lobby. I also configured machines and helped with systems integration and AV integrator oversight.

The biggest challenge was calibrating the sensor system to accurately track people with thermal imaging regardless of environmental conditions like rainy days resulting in people wearing cold wet jackets or large pallets of hot or cold objects being placed in the space for extended periods. This project also taught me that it’s difficult to design a single tracking system that accurately tracks people and a wide variety of dogs.