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MLE and Greyworld - The Source of art in an electronic age
ML Electronics (MLE) and urban artists Greyworld take on the challenge of creating The Source, an innovative electronic installation commissioned by the London Stock Exchange in time for its unveiling by the Queen at the opening of the new stock exchange July 2004.
- The Queen opens new stock exchange building - VIDEO WMV 4MB (From LSE)
- London Stock Exchange site - 'The Source' news archive
- BBC - New London Stock Exchange opens
The Source project
When electronics experts MLE were approached by urban artists Greyworld to help them with the design of their moving sculpture “The Source” commissioned by the London Stock Exchange, they found a challenge that would test their electronics design and manufacture skills to the limit.
Established as a world-class group of artists; Greyworld’s primary objective is to create public art so that its visitors become actively part of the installation itself, the work not being complete without them. Their work, unlike that of other artists’ regularly embraces technology to create something that otherwise may not be possible.
A symbol of the London Stock Exchanges’ position at the centre of London’s financial markets, The Source is a moving sculpture that combines an innovative application of technology and ground-breaking art to visually represent London’s financial and capital markets in an electronic age. The sculpture’s constantly changing shape is intended to reflect the dynamic nature of the stock market. As the Exchange is now fully computerised and no longer has a trading floor, The Source’s highly mobile and active nature also reflects this now hidden activity.
Every day The Source marks whether the markets have opened and closed up or down with an arrow and it can also create random shifting patterns, words, numbers and shapes all reflecting occurrences in the markets throughout the day.
The Source is made up of 729 spheres suspended across 162 cables that are 5.6km in length. 1400 blue LED’s ensure that each sphere is lit from within and spanning 6 floors The Source is 10 metres taller than the Angel of the North.
ML Electronics’ role
MLE were initially contracted solely to manufacture The Source’s 2000 plus printed circuit boards (PCBs), however it wasn’t long before MLE were involved on a much larger scale as technical difficulties with the original design presented themselves.
With over 10 years experience of electronics design and manufacture MLE were the obvious candidate to help overcome these difficulties. They were able to build upon Greyworld’s existing design to better facilitate the boards’ manufacture;
“We actually redesigned the PCBs in the end to make them easier to produce.” Peter Doré, Operations Director remarks “because we have a manufacturing facility here at MLE, we are better able to design electronics suited to manufacturing processes and this was crucial to the efficient running of the project.”
One of Greyworld’s requirements was an economical design that could be mass replicated for each of The Source’s spheres. MLE created an alternative solution for this by using a power supply chip instead of a conventional motor driver chip. In using this type of chip to carry out a motor drive function the cost of controlling each sphere’s motor speed was more than halved.
The power lines along which the spheres travel up and down also needed to be lines of communication between the spheres and the central control. To overcome this MLE pioneered a technique that interrupted the power supply as a means of communication.
Using their skills in embedded intelligence MLE enabled The Source control’s ability to listen to the Greyworld system and interpret instructions and decisions. This allowed it to create its endless formations from a DNA Helix to a sunrise and meant that The Source could respond in real time to the fluctuations of the stock market.
MLE also had a very tight deadline to work to right from the start of their involvement; everything had to be ready in time for the Queen to officially open the new Stock Exchange building on 27th July 2004. That gave them just 3 months to have everything up and running.
MLE rose to the challenge and managed to complete the project in record time as Martyn Dowty, MLE’s Engineering Manager comments:
“We managed to turn PCBs round from concept to working pre-production prototypes in 4 weeks and then produce and test 2000 finished units in another 4 weeks. That kind of output is just phenomenal for a company of our size.”
The project pulled together a number of areas of expertise within MLE, the team offers expertise in a number of fields and a broad experience in a wide range of technologies, such as power supply, motor control and embedded intelligence, which were all used in this project. It is not however MLE’s outstanding ability in these technologies that distinguishes them from the competition but their ability to integrate them. The MLE team can boast an enormous capability in developing integrated systems to perform very complex tasks and The Source project is a perfect example of this.
The end result
200 million people around the world watched the opening of the London Stock Exchange’s new building and subsequent unveiling of The Source. The Source is televised to over 50 million people every day as various new reports come live from the stock exchange.
Reflecting on the project Greyworld’s Andrew Shoben could only praise MLE’s involvement:
“MLE really saved our bacon, they really are good people who bring to the table their whole focus and a lot of expertise. They have a great team and we were really impressed with their level of support. You get the whole show with MLE and we would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone.”
To discuss this project technically, please contact MLE’s Technical Director Nick Palmer on 01794 885790.
For more information about MLE and how we might be able to help you please contact us on 01794 885790.
