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clear picture of how the state will attendto future clients coming into the system.

“Programs and supports have beendiscontinued before alternative optionshave been developed,” said Steven Kroll,the Albany-based executive director ofNYSARC Inc., the nation’s largest non-profit provider of services to people withdevelopmental disabilities.

Faced with the closing of Broome De-velopmental Center, the state has failedto develop a strategy to shift the futureburden of care to the private sector.

The New York State Office for PeopleWith Developmental Disabilities has ageneral timetable for the transfer of cli-ents. But the nonprofit organizationsfacing heavier caseloads say they lack a

WATCHDOG REPORT: NO PLANS FOR THE DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED

A disorderly transition for disabledNo apparent plan exists for future care of the disabledafter the closing of Broome Developmental Center

JEFF PLATSKY JPLATSKY@PRESSCONNECTS.COM

Findings» Closing the state-operated BDC was forcedby federal regulations covering the disabled,but the New York Office for People withDevelopmental Disabilities says it has no planfor the shutdown or handling developmental-ly disabled people into the future.» Few plans have been made for the devel-opmentally disabled now and in the future,say nonprofit leaders, who will bear the bur-den of providing care. » Discussion on the future of the 325,000-square-foot facility has not taken place, mean-ing it will soon join other abandoned, formergovernment buildings in the region.

FILE PHOTOThe Broome Developmental Center isscheduled to close by March 31. See DISABLED, Page 9A

A tangle of electrical cords spills down State Street’s

sidewalk on a cool night early last week. ® At one

end of the snarl, near the last of the brick store-

fronts before the block collides with Lewis Street, a handful

of people cluster around a large, black projector resting on a

wooden stand. ® A young man at the side of the projector

presses a button. The machine begins to hum. ® Then, across

the street on the side of a brick building, a brilliant white-blue

square of light flickers into being.

TICE LERNER, BINGPOP PHOTOThe Christ Church tower on Henry Street in Binghamton is lit up during a test run for LUMA. The tower is one of five buildings to be used in the projection arts festival.

BRINGINGLUMA TOLIGHT

Aftermonths

of work,organizers

hope theprojection

festival willilluminate

downtownBinghamton

ANDREW THAYER / STAFF PHOTONick Rubenstein, co-producer and organizer ofLUMA, inspects a 20,000-lumen projector.

If you goWhat: LUMA Festival.When: 8 p.m. to midnight Friday.Cost: Free to the public.Where: State Street in Binghamton between HenryStreet and Lewis Street.Buildings:» Atomic Tom’s, 196 State St.» Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts,186 State St.» The Forum, 236 Washington St.(on the State Street side)» The Christ Church tower, 10 Henry St.» Townsquare Media, 59 Court St.

MEGAN BROCKETT MBROCKETT@PRESSCONNECTS.COM

See LUMA, Page 10A

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22C

For about 10 minutes, the machine op-erator and two of his colleagues tinkerwith the projector and the two iPads con-nected to it. The white-blue square is re-placed by a bright pink one bearing thewords “Internet Connection Failed.”Carl Schrecongost, the young man be-side the projector, groans.

Finally, the images from the iPads —floating neon squares — take over theside of the building.

“There we go!” Schrecongost, 24, ofBinghamton, murmurs.

Nearby, Joshua Ludzki watches,snaps photos and doles out praise as theprojection turns into a striking interac-tive display, images drawn on the iPadsbrilliantly overlaid atop the bricks.

Tuesday’s nighttime display was atest run of the Binghamton Universitycinema department’s contribution to LU-MA, a free projection arts festival thatLudzki’s company, BingPop, has plannedfor downtown Binghamton on Fridaynight.

More than a dozen high-powered pro-jectors will light up the sides and faces offive buildings on and near State Streetwith animated visual displays through atechnology called 3D projection map-ping, organizers say.

The technology, more common inEurope but a growing trend here — itwas recently used on the Empire StateBuilding — uses the shape and architec-tural features of a building to make theprojected animations more realistic.

“There’s something really magicaland mystical about it,” said Ludzki, 35, ofBinghamton. “This familiar structurethat you’ve seen downtown a hundredtimes before, that sort of blends into thebackground, suddenly ... sort of explodesin this way that (makes) you go, ‘myGod.’”

It makes you see the world that haslong existed around you in new ways,Ludzki said, and that generates excite-ment.

In many ways, that’s the goal of LU-MA.

When the sun begins to set on Fridayand the darkness settles in, LUMA orga-nizers will be hoping that the festival,which began as a modest idea backed bya small team of ardent Binghamton en-thusiasts, will shine a light on the citythey love.

They hope that the festival draws on-lookers from across the region andopens people’s eyes to a downtown that isin the middle of a resurgence — and thatthat realization fuels further revitaliza-tion.

They hope that as the projector lightsflicker on, the spotlight on Binghamtonwill grow.

On Tuesday, members of the Bing-hamton University cinema departmentcontinued to hone their display on theside of the Kelley Building. It would be asmaller, “bonus” project on top of thefestival’s five primary projections,which have been in the works formonths.

Tuesday night’s test run carried on.LUMA was 10 days away.

The idea’s roots

Like many BingPop productions, LU-MA started as a relatively simple idea —then exploded.

The story begins on New Year’s Eve,just after a masquerade party at the Ro-berson mansion co-hosted by BingPop,the Binghamton-specific events plan-ning and promotion company run byLudzki.

An after-party at Social on State fea-tured a surprise projection show of loop-ing videos, all with a Binghamton theme.Instead of projecting the videos insidethe bar, Ludzki’s group decided to showthem on the front of the State Streetbuilding with the hopes of attracting at-tention — Ludzki called it the modern,more interesting equivalent of spot-lights outside an opening or a premier.

The next morning, Ludzki got a callfrom local artist Tice Lerner, who want-ed to know what Ludzki knew about pro-jection mapping.

The answer at the time: Not much. So Ludzki searched YouTube. Up

came videos of powerful visual art dis-plays on buildings in places like Dubaiand Las Vegas.

Lerner, 29, of Binghamton, askedLudzki if he had ever thought about do-ing anything similar in their city, wherethe downtown architecture would offer astriking backdrop.

Soon, the two were working late intothe night on small-scale test runs fash-ioned from a white cardboard box and aborrowed projector.

As those early tests unfolded in Ludz-ki’s apartment, the event that wouldcome to be called LUMA was still aboutseven months away.

“(One) thing that we found — and thisis both a good and a bad thing — is thatwhen you look (projection mapping) uponline, there’s not a whole lot of informa-tion on it,” Lerner said. “This is not some-thing that you can just look up and do.”

But it was for that reason, and not inspite of it, that the two were drawn to theidea, Lerner said.

“With that type of thing, if you can fig-ure out how to do it, you’ve got somethingunique,” he said.

On the map

As Ludzki and Lerner tinkered withtheir idea and drew in more people tohelp, their plans for a projection artsevent downtown grew.

Their goal evolved from using thecourthouse for a projection mapping dis-play to throwing a major, first-of-its-kindfestival that could grow into a regional,national, even international attraction inyears to come.

“Rather than us going down to NewYork City to see a Broadway show,they’re coming up to see our projectionfestival,” Ludzki said of the idea.

To accomplish that, they knew theyhad to think not just big, but bigger.

In the places where projection map-ping had already been done, the displaywas typically kept to a single structure.

“It’s very common to do one building,”Ludzki said. “So we said, ‘Well, how do weblow that out of the water?’”

The answer: The Binghamton eventwould feature five buildings of projec-tion mapping displays, all in one night.

The festival took on the name LUMA,borrowed from a video term that refersto the brightness in an image.

Making LUMA a reality

Zach Mulligan was in the middle ofthe post-college job hunt with his sightsset on Los Angeles when Ludzki ap-proached him about using his computeranimation background to help bring amajor festival to Binghamton.

Mulligan was busy, but Ludzki, whohad been “blown away” by his talent dur-ing their time together at a local radiostation, wanted him for the team.

“I (told him), ‘You have to do this,’”Ludzki said. “‘This is our community,and (the event is) gonna grow, and you’regonna wanna be involved in it a yearfrom now or two years from now.’”

As an added incentive, Ludzki toldMulligan he wanted him to work withMason Mastroianni and the rest of theteam behind the nationally syndicated“B.C.” comic strip, which Mastroianni’sgrandfather, Johnny Hart, a BroomeCounty native, created in the 1950s.

Mulligan could help bring the famouscavemen to life as a 3-D animation forthe first time, Ludzki told him.

And so Mulligan, a 22-year-old Apala-chin resident who had recently finishedan internship with DreamWorks, agreed.

Mastroianni and the “B.C.” teamagreed, too.

When Mulligan and Mastroianni met,LUMA was about two months away, andslowly, the pieces of the puzzle that Ludz-ki and the others had gathered werestarting to fall together.

Other artists and animators hadclimbed on board, and clearer pictures

of the five primary LUMA projects be-gan to emerge.

A giant tin robot will battle “peppero-ni PizzAliens” in a display on the back ofthe Forum. A community-sourced artgallery will be on display on the side ofthe Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts building.The “B.C.” comic characters will cometo life on the State Street side of theTownsquare Media building.

LUMA animators, in some cases, used3-D animation software to recreate thebuildings upon which their projectionswill play. This lets them manipulate thereal buildings in ways that will make itappear as though, for instance, the win-dows are moving or swinging open.

In other cases, the animators use mo-tion graphics programs like Adobe AfterEffects to create their displays.

The finished animation projects arestored on computers that will be hookedup to high-powered projectors the nightof the festival. Special projection map-ping software called VPT will allow thevideos to be warped slightly to better fitthe buildings.

Projectors 12 times the strength ofcommon classroom projectors will splaythe animations across the walls of thebuildings, and sound will complementthe displays.

To watch these projections transforma downtown architectural relic is toknow this: LUMA takes brick and mor-tar, adds light, and makes magic.

Light at the end

Back at Tuesday’s test run on the sideof the Kelley Building, Nick Rubensteinlooks on and chats with people gatheredon the sidewalk.

Rubenstein, a former colorist and mo-tion graphics artist in Los Angeles, ishelping put on LUMA with Ludzki andLerner.

In the months since the idea’s incep-tion, Rubenstein, now of Binghamton,worked with the featured artists to makesure their projects matched what LUMAorganizers were envisioning, and creat-ed his own projection artwork to show-case at the festival.

Standing on State Street less than twoweeks before the big night, Rubensteintalks excitedly about the “amazing”things that are taking place, but admitsthere’s still a lot of work to be done.

“It’s exciting, but it’s also a littlescary,” he says, and laughs. “I won’t lie —I’m having trouble sleeping.”

A Kickstarter campaign offering do-nor incentives such as wristbands and T-shirts bearing the LUMA logo set an ini-tial goal of $3,000 and brought in $15,212for the festival in about four weeks, ac-cording to a post on the LUMA Kickstar-ter page.

Ludzki earlier this month declined tocomment on the festival’s estimated

cost. While BingPop is a for-profit com-pany, Ludzki said he was not looking tomake money off LUMA.

Ludzki, who is originally from NewJersey, is a charismatic and passionatespokesman for Binghamton. ThroughBingPop and its predecessor, BingSpot,he has had a key role in events such asBinghamton Restaurant Week, the Wine& Tapas Tour, Martini Walk and Mas-querade in the Mansion.

Those events, while popular, have kin-dred spirits in vibrant downtowns acrossthe country, he says.

But something like LUMA? Totallydifferent. Something, he believes, thatcould really put Binghamton on the map.

Time for transformation

LUMA’s particular Friday is alsoFirst Friday, the city’s monthly eventthat draws visitors downtown to take inBinghamton’s latest artistic offerings.

This Friday will also feature a StateStreet Block Party, promising to bringmusic, food, artisans and entertainmentto the street from 5 to 11 p.m.

But as the dark settles, the city’slights will go out, and LUMA’s will comeon.

Spectators will gather along a stretchof State Street from Henry Street toLewis Street — closed to traffic for thenight’s festivities.

Five primary projection projects willilluminate their chosen buildings one byone. The crowd will watch, then a count-down will lead them to the next buildingand the next display.

Displays will run in loops for the dura-tion of LUMA, scheduled to last from 8p.m. to midnight.

Festival organizers are hoping peoplewill turn out in the thousands to see thebuildings transform.

They also want LUMA to build onwhat they see as a transformation ofdowntown Binghamton, to help highlightits appeal — and its promise.

“If you’ve lived here for a long time,you’ve seen some things you really liked,some institutions that you really liked,(go) away,” Ludzki said. “It’s hard to val-ue the awesome things that we have, andit’s hard to recognize the importance ofthe new things that are growing.”

Ludzki and LUMA’s organizers be-lieve there is hope in this city, and poten-tial. Not “pie in the sky potential,” hesaid, but potential already being real-ized.

The growth of downtown is no longera “politician’s promise,” he said, butsomething that’s being executed — andLUMA is a part of that.

“We’re headed towards a really, reallyremarkable transformation,” he said.

Follow Megan Brockett on Twitter@PSBMegan.

LUMAContinued from Page 1A

BINGPOP PHOTOTice Lerner, co-founder of LUMA, plays with a projector as it splashes light onto the side of a building on State Street downtown.

ANDREW THAYER / STAFF PHOTOJoshua B. Ludzki, co-founder of LUMA, projects an image Tuesday along State Street indowntown Binghamton.

THE FACES BEHIND LUMA

Joshua Ludzki, co-founder of LUMAAge: 35.Home: Binghamton.Hometown: Fair Lawn, New Jersey.Occupation: Founder of BingPop.Tice Lerner, co-founder of LUMAAge: 29.Home: Binghamton.Hometown: Binghamton.Occupation: PhotographerNick Rubenstein, co-producer of LUMAAge: 45.Home: Binghamton .Hometown: New Haven, Connecticut. Occupation: Owner of JungleScience Gal-lery and Art Laboratories.

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