London has long been at the forefront of global club innovation with a rich history of venues that have stretched the boundaries of that which is perceived as cutting edge. The city's latest late night venue may be small (with an exclusive capacity of just one hundred), but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in terms of its fusion of technology and design.

Kabaret's Prophecy is a subterranean members club located along the Beak Street area of Soho and features a strikingly unique interior design scheme which is based almost entirely around an innovative application of LED technology. The brainchild of pioneering environmental graphics engineers and live performance video specialists, United Visual Artists (UVA), the installation offers both a display of avante-garde visual art as well as a new definition of environmental design. It is also an installation which continues to push LED capability into new and varied areas of application by providing a backdrop to the club based on a sculptured, moving image wall constructed from modular intelligent LED pixel blocks. Upon this electronic canvas, graphics and animations, triggered from a real time generator or MIDI keyboard, are superimposed to create an ever changing mood tableau. Significantly, this application of LED technology is the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

The venue's design and brand consultant, David Collins, has created a monochromatic space designed to stimulate the senses and with 'maximalism' as a strong, central theme.

Two of the four linear walls at Kabaret's Prophecy have been clad in Barco's proprietary MiPIX system, which can display intelligent lighting effects, 3D logos or graphics and even full video content. These moving images will even curve around the contours of the walls and wrap themselves into the alcoves.

David Collins enlisted Chris Levine, an acclaimed light artist, to help realise his vision in this former Piers Adams venue. Levine's past projects include design and direction of laser elements on Massive Attack's 2003 '100th Window' tour. This revolution in technology brings together both UVA and video system specialists Creative Technology - early adopters of MiPIX blocks.

In a first for concert touring, advanced pixel-mapping technologies, combined with UVA's graphics processing, had permitted newspaper headlines and email messages to be streamed to the giant 15mm LED media backdrop at each venue on Massive Attack's tour.

Introduced to the Kabaret project by David Collins, UVA provided all playback, software, programming and operational personnel as well as designing and producing all content. In turn, UVA enlisted the help of Creative Technology who have been responsible for the design and integration of the MiPIX wall.

CT's sales director, Mike Walker, wanted the creative team to push the technology envelope as far as possible, by being able to address LED sculptural walls with visual art live, in real time, and on a nightly basis. UVA's graphical content provide's the changing moods.

Although Creative Technology have run large-scale MiPIX displays at expos in Geneva and Las Vegas this will be the first permanent, and large-scale integration of its kind, and is being seen as the model for a potential rollout.

Each MiPIX measures 4cm x 4cm and CT have deployed almost 3,000 to create two vast canvasses measuring 17.2m wide by 1.2m high. The modularity of the MiPIX display allows more pixel blocks to be added at any time, should the resolution of the display need to be increased. However, the lo-res media wall will be ideally-suited for running purpose-created graphics sequences off a PC, thanks to some imaginative thinking by UVA's technical director, Chris Bird. "Providing an ambient installation on a curved LED wall posed certain problems, which we had to solve in an unconventional way," says Chris. "We knew we had to be able to (a) address the wall pixel perfect; (b) address an exploded screen without losing aspect ratio, and (c) make it operational in real time."

He first set up a demonstration to illustrate how playback and FX might be controlled in real-time, using a laptop plugged into a bespoke MIDI instrument, driven by UVA's proprietary software. Each successive band tour undertaken by UVA has seen an evolution of their original Mosquito software platform, and at Kabaret's Prophecy they will be using an enhanced version of their Dragonfly 2 software - developed on that Massive Attack tour and tailored to fit this video-wall installation.

Chris Bird explains: "Because of the inherent pixel gaps in LED displays, conventional processors are unable to send component video pictures without losing aspect ratio. We are now able to maintain true aspect ratio, and therefore continuity of the image, by drawing video onto a virtual canvas, which can be saved as an actual canvas."

Thus each pixel in a display can be addressed individually. A video editing station is located next to the DJ booth where the VJ will be positioned five nights a week. Mounted in a 19in rack will be a Pentium 4 PC fitted with dual head NVIDIA graphics card, allowing control to be implemented either via the computer keyboard or a M-Audio Oxygen 8 two-octave USB MIDI Keyboard Controller, plugged into the computer. This will enable UVA to store Stop, Loop and Edit attributes onto a specific time frame to correspond with trading patterns. It all adds up to a system which, by flooding the room with warm or cold colours, will provide an ever-changing architectural canvas.

There are definite advantages to this, UVA's first club project: "The opportunity to have something permanent in the West End is an obvious benefit - it's a great shop window for UVA, and, compared to a live tour, the club environment gives us the opportunity to continuously update the content, and even upgrade the display if necessary. A tour is usually set in stone - at Kabaret's Prophecy we can experiment, free form, mixing visuals to music."

Adding to the venue's impressive technology package is an audio install from Electracoustic. Overcoming the usual challenges of noise emission issues and low ceiling height, Electracoustic's Jon Trotter chose loudspeakers from four different manufacturers with the Turbosound TQ series chosen for the main dancefloor system. "The offset trapezoid shape and rotatable hf horn of the TQ-310 made these suitable for insetting into custom recessed housings in the false ceiling," explains Jon. "Seating areas around the dancefloor perimeter have too low a ceiling for suspended loudspeakers and the Barco LED feature takes up the whole of the rear wall. As a result Tannoy dual concentric CMS-60 units, which are essentially a studio monitor in a large ceiling loudspeaker housing, have been installed to cover these zones. The performance of the Turbosound loudspeakers supplemented with the Tannoy units has produced high quality sound throughout the club with a slick and unobtrusive visual profile."

Amplification comes from five MC2 T series amplifiers plus an eight channel model from Bittner Audio whilst at the heart of the system is a Biamp Audia digital processor under computer control.

technical information
sound: 4 x Turbosound TQ-310 loudspeaker; 2 x Turbosound TQ-115 bass cabinet; 2 x EM Acoustics EMS-81 loudspeaker; 6 x Canford BA400 loudspeaker, aluminium body & grille; 4 x Tannoy CMS-60 TDC-8 dual concentric ceiling mount loudspeaker; 1 x MC2 T2-450 4 channel power amplifier; 1 x MC2 T1000 power amplifier; 2 x MC2 T1500 power amplifier; 1 x MC2 T2000 power amplifier; 1 x Bittner 8X100 eight channel amplifier; 1 x Biamp Audia Solo digital system controller with VS8, V8 & logic control box; 1 x TC Electronic M-One XL reverb processor; 1 x Imrak 1400 19" equipment rack; 1 x Pioneer DJM909 DJ mixer, narrow design to fit space; 1 x Soundcraft E6 mixer; 2 x Technics SL1210 Mk5 decks, Shure SC35 cartridge; 2 x Pioneer CDJ-1000 DJ CD player; 1 x BSS DPR-402 compressor-limiter; 1 x DBX 166XL compressor-limiter; 1 x Tascam MD-350 rackmount minidisc player; 1 x Sennheiser EW335 radio microphone, UHF, diversity; 1 x Shure Beta 58A microphone; Powerdrive custom ceiling suspension & wall and brackets; EPDM vibration absorbent sheet for under bass cabinets & decks/cd players