A prominent arts and media institution in Downtown Brooklyn, BRIC’s activities span contemporary visual and performing arts, media and civic action. A newly installed Riedel Artist digital matrix intercom and Bolero wireless intercom have integrated communications across its BRIC House venue, including a public media centre, contemporary art exhibition space, two performance spaces, a glass-walled TV studio and artist workspaces.

Over the past 40 years, BRIC has shaped Brooklyn’s cultural and media landscape by presenting and incubating artists, creators, students and media makers.

‘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,’ says BRIC Arts Media Director of Technology, David Feldman. ‘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.’

With its deployment of Artist, 2300 Series SmartPanels, and Bolero beltpacks, BRIC has adopted a distributed, IP-based intercom infrastructure providing flexible configuration and crystal-clear communication. 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 Riedel, BRIC has moved from basic partyline functionality with limited channels to 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 by adding another panel or antenna.

‘Through its work, BRIC is driving Brooklyn’s creative future and providing an example for similar arts and media institutions across the country,’ says Riedel North America VP of Strategic Accounts, East, Philip Stein. ‘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.’

More: www.riedel.net