LED technology and the shaping of culture

Undertakes an overview of the technologies involved at the hardware and protocol levels in the operation of the large screen in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia. In the first instance, it looks at LED technology. It backs that up with the protocols – in this instance the compression-decompression algorithms or codecs – used as the basis for more familiar applications software like PAL or NTSC video. This first analytical section suggests that there is a history and because of that a series of constraints to the design of the technologies deployed in urban screens. The second interpretative section uses some of the ideas circulating among contemporary media and communications researchers to inquire whether the fit between hardware and codecs expresses a particular kind of social organisation, and whether, if that is the case, innovation in design and content is inevitably constrained by those historically inherited features, or whether understanding them may be an avenue to innovatio