TechWeekEurope Artwork Exhibited At Saatchi Gallery

An unusual event saw artwork by TechWeekEurope journalists exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London this week.

The Art of Wi-Fi evening pitted tech journalists from various publications against each other, putting together an “assemblage” of found objects, under the guidance of artist Jack Brown. The results were later uploaded and streamed to show off the 70,000 suare foot gallery’s new network provided by Wi-Fi specialist Xirrus.

Arts and crafts

Wi-Fi coverege must increase fast as Wi-Fi-enabled devices are set to grow from less than one billion units in 2010 to more than three billion by 2015, according to Gartner. Xirrus is one of several companies making Wi-Fi systems with multiple base stations to cover offices and other large indoor spaces, alongside larger rivals including Cisco and Aruba.

Xirrus’ particular take is to put mulitple base stations into a single large circular unit, which attaches to the ceiling like an over-sized smoke alarm. The XR series array can have four, eight or sixteen access points, each covering one sector, with a high-gain directional antenna, and linked back to the corporate network through Gigabit Ethernet uplinks.

The units provide four times the coverage and up to eight times the bandwidth and capacity of a standard access point, and have had steady but unexceptional sales over the last decade in schools, universities and stadiums. There are even some military applications, but we are not supposed to talk about it.

The gallery’s network will provide access for visitors, using any device throughout the building, and will also be used to support live streaming of events and content distribution to screens in the venue, as well as to interactive art installations. Xirrus promises it can handle peaks in demand.

TechWeekEurope’s work (see video below) was among the first moving images to ever be displayed at the Gallery, we are told. Which we find surprising, given the important place of video in modern art.

The Saatchi Gallery used to depend on temporary wireless access points that were set up on-demand to coincide with specific events. With ever-growing visitor numbers, the Gallery decided to deploy a permanent wireless network that had the necessary reliability, speed and capacity, and looks that wouldn’t destroy the aesthetics.

Architects on other projects known to TechWeekEurope have been known to reject rival access points with external antennas, or else to re-adjust those antennas to angles where they don’t work.

“It’s vital that any technology we use is as unobtrusive as possible and delivers a flawless user experience. Xirrus was able to deliver a solution that exceeded all our current technical requirements and would meet our anticipated needs for several years to come,” said Nigel Hurst, CEO of the Saatchi Gallery.

“The Gallery is at the cutting edge of contemporary art and we’re excited about having the opportunity to work at the intersection of art and technology a time when we all increasingly depend on wireless technologies to communicate,” shared his thoughts Steven Wastie, chief marketing officer for Xirrus.

How we did it

Speaking of the cutting edge of art, journalists made assemblages, and were then split into four competing teams. Each team then filmed the process of putting the work together and breaking it apart. The result was projected onto the walls of the Gallery.

The winning team comprised two TechWeekEurope writers along with Brian Shemilt, Xirrus’ VP of channel programmes and fellow journalist Steve Evans of Computer Business Review. For your viewing pleasure, we present the video of the process below:

These are the five minutes of your life you will never get back.