To create new, dynamic, contemporary content for the multiple screens in the London Stock Exchange (LSE) atrium, a permanent installation made up of over 500 individual screens divided into seven pre-existing arrangements.

The creative concept was formed around the financial “Big Bang”, when the deregulation of financial markets and electronic trading led to a digital revolution in the way trading was carried out. Our graphics would be themed around a stellar, galaxy concept, with the daily “Birth of the Stock Market” being the hub for the Market Open sequences.

The installation was to serve two purposes: to work as a sales tool, to open the market every morning for IPOs; and to show a dazzling display of market data, news feeds, video content and live television throughout the day. It needed to show both the heritage of the LSE, and reflect their technological prowess.

To meet the dynamic nature of the brief and show instant updates of trades and prices we needed to create a live environment fed by the Proquote data feed used by LSE in their trading terminals. The team wrote low level OpenGL and C++ code to create a series of dependant software modules in order to interrogate the feed, populate a central database, and draw the results in a beautiful, comprehendible way. This would create our living galaxy of data, for viewers to experience in real time.

The LSE needed the option to create bespoke displays for clients. This would be seen as return on investment, and allow the LSE team to manage content in a controllable environment. The controls for this highly customisable system were housed on a custom intranet site, allowing full synchronisation and automation of content displays.

The core infrastructure was already in place, but there was some latitude with units such as media players. Serious power was needed in the graphics cards and CPU to power our galaxy. Specifications for the proposed system were written to the last detail, to provide the grunt needed to drive our concept across the 500 screen configuration and 200 million pixels. We synchronised the output to the screens via a central server which would broadcast commands across the network, accurate within thousandths of a second.

We worked extensively with the raw C++ API to provide the fastest graphical response to the markets possible, subscribing to a huge amount of data to give the feel of an advanced, super-fast stock exchange. The resulting galaxy, with its orbiting stocks and accompanying contemporary composition, shows instantly whether the market is up or down, and the world’s stock activity as it happens. The London Stock Exchange, once again, has its spirit back.