Interactive and social device - Project

The device is a large digital jumble on which - via their smartphone - all visitors will be invited to leave a trace of their passage. The device takes the form of a ring of digital screens around the central core of the 2-storey Eiffel Tower.

For most of the season (mid-March to mid-October), the crowd of visitors is very dense on the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower. Part of the visit time is devoted to making several queues :

At the checkout on the northwest side
At the stairs between the lower and upper levels 2
At the Elevators
At the buffet counter
In the toilet
In front of the shops

We will offer visitors the opportunity to participate in a collective "work" made up of their own photographs and whose modifications will be displayed in real time in the ring of screens via a digital postcard service.

Thanks to a captive portal (as in hotels), the visitor connects with his Smartphone (IOS, Androïd, Windows Phone) to the tower’s Wifi spot. A Web-App is automatically launched. It proposes to the visitors to leave a photographic message staged and displayed on a wall of screens installed on the central nucleus, and sent if they wish to their own email address as a souvenir.

Thus, the idea is to motivate visitors by offering them the pleasure of : "Leave a digital "trace" on the building. They will be able to keep a memory by taking a second picture of the "virtual card" as it appears on the screen ! For couples, it is the possibility of leaving their image "in pairs" that will remain on the Eiffel Tower, in the same way as the contemporary custom of the "love padlocks" of Parisian bridges...

Generative animation

The central nucleus looks like an aviary or butterfly cage. Visitors’ cards fly en masse inside a stylized 3D universe. The cards are folded in half widthwise and beat in rhythm, reproducing the movement of the butterfly wings.

They gather or scatter by creating wave movements inside the aviary. When a new card is created, it first sticks to the window, as close as possible to the visitor, then comes off, moves a little further away, flies a little near the edge, then ends up taking confidence to escape and join the group.

If the front is made up of the visitor’s photo and message, the back is adjustable according to seasonality, on July 14 it can be uniformly distributed between three colours, blue, white and red, forming a random, kinetic or Opt-art composition, on July 4 it can display white stars... ; thus, via a back office, the back can be symbolically themed according to major events.

Technical implementation

The ring is divided into 3 parts corresponding to 3 sections of the image wall.

The ring consists of 27 55-inch screens placed side by side in portrait mode. The screens are fixed on the BAT13 with suitable and thin supports. Each of the 3 sections is controlled by a video server consisting of a powerful PC equipped with a dedicated video card. The screens are linked by groups of 4, two of the PCs manage 8 screens each, the last one manages 11.

A Wifi terminal connected to the Internet manages network access. The signal is distributed all around the ring and ensures high quality connectivity and throughput.

In each section a screen serves as a video tutorial. It makes it possible by mimicry to understand the functioning of the device.

As an option : two small bollards, each with a mini tablet, are integrated into the "manged stands" of the buffet : they allow visitors without smartphones to interact with the device without creating additional obstacles. Incidentally, it creates a small privilege for the users of the buffet.