Stormy Waters: Multi-Cast Glasgow
The Internet Connection
During Stormy Waters, Internet transmissions from artists around the world travelled by
various diverse links to converge on SuperJANET, the UK Research Network. The digital
signals travelled up the spine of Britain on fibre optic to reach the
at the
University of Glasgow.
There the data was queued and organised on multimedia workstations.
InterLynx Ltd
had the responsibililty for world-wide liaison with the digital artists, orchestrating
the multiple live Internet connections, and final delivery of the multimedia imagery.
InterLynx's roles ranged from developing the artists' world wide web site, to
coordinating the contributions of local companies like
Sun Microsystems,
Scottish Telecom and Datarange,
all of whom pitched in with substantial equipment and manpower aid to enable worldwide
communications.
The digitised pictures were transferred to a vantage point high up on a tower of the
University of Glasgow ,
where the signals were routed onto a radio transmitter dish and beamed at 8Mb/s over the
city of Glasgow to the event site 2km distant on the River Clyde. At the event site this
data was channeled to an ethernet linking the on-site workstations wherein the digitised
art was transduced to video feeds for display.
On The Mbone
The Clyde not only received incoming digital art, it also broadcast the whole Stormy Waters
performance live around the world on the Internet Multicast Backbone (mbone). The mbone is
a means for efficient transmission of video and audio data across the global Internet. Audio
and video of the Stormy Waters event was digitised on-site and beamed back to the University
tower.
From there it was multicast on the global mbone and audiences around the world were able to
witness Stormy Waters live on their own computer screens.
The Stormy Waters live broadcast was advertised in the LBL Session Directory and was broadcast
on a Multicast Address, with the tools VIC, VAT and WB. For CU-SeeMe, there was
a reflector on-site.
All enquires should be directed to InterLynx.
