Video mapping specialists Maxin10sity has featured in the German city of Karlsruhe’s 300th anniversary celebrations, providing projection mapping using 24 Panasonic 3-chip DLP projectors. Maxin10sity started the celebrations on 20 June with other artists featuring in the festival, which continues for 15 weeks throughout the summer.
The Schlosslichtspiele (Palace Light Projection), organised by Stadtmarketing Karlsruhe and curated by the Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media (ZKM), will illuminate the entire southern façade of the Karlsruhe Palace until September 26.
Peter Weibel, CEO and chairman of the ZKM, explained: “When we saw their video mapping performance on the Bucharest Parliament for the 555th anniversary of the city last year, we were very impressed by their technical virtuosity and artistic approach.“
The 300 Fragments show developed by Maxin10sity was complemented by a musical soundtrack and animation created in-house. “The music is perfectly synchronised with the content, enhancing the immersive experience,“ explained Maxin10sity’s creative director, András Sass. “Keeping an audience engaged for 15 minutes was no easy task, but the combination of content and music made the public forget about time and transport them in a daydream.”
Local creative agency PXNG.LI teamed up with AV-Active/Möhring for the technical side of the event delivering 3D models and textures for the nine groups of artists to develop their content.
Dominik Rinnhofer, PXNG.LI CEO and creative director commented: “The castle wings have a 45° angle, which made it particularly tricky as we had to work with three perspective cameras. The technical team at Maxin10sity offered their expertise to map the façade and ensure perfect 3D effects. Then the challenge for the 3D artists was to calculate the perspective renderings into an orthogonal template to match the façade.” The cameras were set up perpendicularly to the façade, before the content was merged into one single file.
To project on the Karlsruhe Palace 180m long by 20m high façade, 24 Panasonic 3 chip DLP projectors were rigged in two towers 80m away from the façade. The organisers tripled the number of projectors used, as the opening night was so close to the summer solstice, reaching 75 lux on the facade.
Each tower hosts four groups of three projectors shooting at various angles. All projectors were dry hired from Lang Medientechnik. And because the audience is very close to the castle, the projection surface has a resolution of almost 11K (10800 x 1080).
Weibel concluded: “We wanted the audience to escape from reality and experience altered states of perception and consciousness, and thanks to Maxin10sity, we achieved exactly that.”
Pictures and video courtesy of Maxin10sity
