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Digital Signage At Woodstock

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Uses Immersive Multimedia to 

Mark the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a state-of-the-art, multivenue performing arts center located at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, New York, and is home to a 10,000-square foot museum. The museum, located approximately 90 minutes from New York City, serves as an educational and informational facility, and examines the social and cultural legacy of the 1960s as well as the evolution of Rock music.



The Woodstock Music and Art Festival, which was billed as 3 days of peace and music, was held on August 15 to August 18, 1969 at a 600-acre dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel.  Notable performers include The Who, Sly and the Family Stone, The Grateful Dead, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Santana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Jefferson Airplane.  The festival brought together nearly 500,000 people and was one of the culminating events of the ‘60s —a decade of radical cultural transformation that included astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin ("Buzz") Aldrin, Jr. walking on the moon, escalating conflict in Vietnam, and Richard M. Nixon being elected as the 37th President of the United States.


Sitting on nearly 2,000 bucolic acres in Sullivan county countryside, The Museum at Bethel Woods also includes a 4,500-seat stage with an additional 10,500 seats on a natural sloping lawn. The Museum presents personal stories and profiles from the festival through the use of immersive multimedia displays that include 20 films, five interactive productions, 164 artifacts, and more than 300 photographic murals.

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Digital Signage around Paris

On a recent trip to France we had the opportunity to observe digital signage installations at several cultural institutions. On a visit to du musée du Louvre's newly renovated Musées des Arts Décoratifs digital signage has been deployed for wayfinding using five small Samsung LCD screens. The museum's collection of decorative arts is divided by time period beginning in the 1940's and going up to present day. Each screen plays a continuous video loop previewing each floor's collection. Additional screens are located at the main entrance. The screen content was developed by Comil, a french-based multimedia firm.

At the Musee du quai Branly, a museum dedicated to tribal arts from across the globe, a large LED sign at the main entrance displays information about current exhibitions. The Museum makes extensive use of kiosks systems and displays including a multimedia mezzanine, unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the museum.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France site François Mitterrand uses kiosk-based systems for information, catalog search, and research. Digital signage is used in wayfinding and for exhibition, the Les Globes de Louis XIV was currently on display in the library's main floor.

Walking around Paris I can't really say that there's a lot of digital signage in use at street level. Some of the fashion focused stores are using displays for ambiance playing runway videos and slide shows and there are some larger digital signage systems on the Champs-Elysées, but overall the amount of signage deployed around Paris is fairly conservative.