Video wall earns national award

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The video wall in the Freeman School's Raymond Family Student Gateway was named Best New Interactive Digital Signage Product at the 2018 Digital Signage Expo. (Photo by Sabree Hill)

With stunning 10K videos and interactive content spread across nine 70-inch touch-screen panels, the video wall in the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex is a dazzling digital showcase for the A. B. Freeman School of Business.

It’s also, as of last month, an award-winning showcase.

In April, rAVe [Publications], the AV industry’s leading news organization, honored the wall with a 2018 Best of DSE Award for Best New Interactive Digital Signage Product. The awards recognize the best new technologies unveiled at the Digital Signage Expo, the industry’s biggest annual trade show.

Developed in collaboration with DesignCentrix, a Chicago-based designer and builder of digital exhibits, and Elo, manufacturer of the touch screens, the wall is the first of its kind to feature multiple touch-screen panels capable of displaying a single video or acting as independent touch screens.

“For the AV world, that multifunctionality is the big accomplishment,” says Jeremiah Fitzgerald, executive vice president of DesignCentrix. “When nobody’s interacting with it, the wall plays video content that spans nine touch screens. If somebody touches it, those nine screens that were acting together split into independent touch screens, allowing up to nine users to interact with the wall at the same time. That’s never been done before.”

Located in the Raymond Family Student Gateway on the first floor of the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex, the wall features panoramic video of New Orleans and Tulane’s uptown campus displayed at a jaw-dropping resolution of 10K by 2K and interactive content highlighting hundreds of the people who make up the Freeman community — students, faculty, alumni, employers and school friends.

“The video wall was designed to support our communications but also allow students and faculty to experiment with different modes of collaboration and engagement,” says Associate Dean John Clarke, who led the design and development of the wall for the Freeman School. “It’s been exciting to see how quickly it’s become a destination for campus tours and alumni visitors.”

Freeman School Dean Ira Solomon, who first proposed the video wall early in the building’s design phase, sums it up more succinctly.

“It’s great to have a world-class physical plant, but we are fundamentally about the people who occupy this space,” Solomon says. “The wall is our way of celebrating those people.”