BRIC, a leading arts and media institution anchored in Downtown Brooklyn whose work spans contemporary visual and performing arts, media, and civic action, has united communications across its BRIC House venue with a new Artist digital matrix intercom, including the 2318 SmartPanel key panels and Bolero wireless intercom systems, from Riedel Communications. Helping facilitate clear communications and flexible configuration across diverse spaces — including a public media center, a major contemporary art exhibition space, two performance spaces, a glass-walled TV studio, and artist workspaces — Artist and Bolero have provided BRIC unprecedented agility in managing productions, programming, and events.
BRIC Arts Media supports contemporary visual and performing arts, media, and civic action. Over the past 40 years, BRIC has shaped Brooklyn’s cultural and media landscape by presenting and incubating artists, creators, students, and media makers. A creative catalyst for the surrounding community, BRIC ignites learning in people of all ages and centers diverse voices that take risks and drive culture forward.
“The Riedel Artist and Bolero installation across our facility has taken communications from the equivalent of two tin cans and a string to a state-of-the-art system with impressive power and versatility,” said David Feldman, Director of Technology at BRIC Arts Media. “We’ve been able to eliminate silos of communication across all our performing arts spaces and productions to create a cohesive system with communication zones serving different productions. Along with added functionality and channel capacity, we’ve also gained desperately needed mobility. We’ve only just started exploring the possibilities, and we see tremendous opportunity ahead.”
“Through its work, BRIC is driving Brooklyn’s creative future — and providing an example for similar arts and media institutions across the country,” said Philip Stein, Vice President of Strategic Accounts, East, at Riedel North America. “We can’t wait to see the creative new ways BRIC leverages our intercom systems to take productions, concerts, and other events to the next level.”
With its deployment of Artist, 2300 Series SmartPanels, and Bolero beltpacks, BRIC has implemented a distributed, IP-based intercom infrastructure that supports flexible configuration and seamless, crystal-clear communications. Just four Bolero antennas provide beltpack coverage for the entire BRIC building, eliminating frequency coordination issues while enabling use of inexpensive headsets — the same used for Zoom calls — for communications among staff members.
With the Riedel gear, BRIC has moved from basic partyline functionality with limited channels to much more robust functionality across all spaces, with the ability to isolate specific channels and create separate communications zones for different productions. With newfound power and agility in managing communications, including remote access and configuration, the BRIC technical team can more efficiently manage multiple simultaneous productions. Riedel’s Artist and Bolero intercom systems have also made it much easier to collaborate — whether working on site, remotely, or on productions and events — while maintaining social distancing protocols. Going forward, BRIC can scale up and extend the intercom system simply by adding another panel or antenna.
