046 report
PAL ACE O F PA R L I A M E N T Company: Maxin10sity Location: Bucharest, Romania With a floor surface of 350,000 sq metres, the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, is the world’s largest administrative building after the Pentagon. To celebrate the 555th anniversary of the capital city, Creart, the city cultural centre, decided to offer something special to the inhabitants of Bucharest and were impressed by the videomapping project submitted by local event stager, 360 Revolution. 360 Revolution managed the technical side of the event, and called in Hungarian video mapping specialist Max10sity to handle the colossal task of creating a video mapping as well as organising all video projection content, acting as a curator for this artistic performance. The Palace of the Parliament is 270-metres long with an 86-metres high front façade, boasting a total projection area of 23,000sq metres. “For a project of this scale, 8K resolution quickly became obvious. We wanted the audience to experience this wow factor while at the same time create some emotion,” commented
Image courtesy of Ross Ashton
WIN DS OR CA STL E Company: Projection Studio Location: Berkshire, UK
www.mondodr.com
András Sass, Maxin10sity’s Art Director, who was in charge of developing the content with his colleague László Czigány. “Working with this resolution allowed us to dramatically improve the rendering and deliver very sharp images.” The content focused on the building itself, highlighting its architectural details, and sublimating the grandiose nature of the Parliament. To support the images, Maxin10sity worked with Spanish songwriter and producer Ivan Torrent. In order to project on the whole surface, the rental stager sourced an impressive 104 Panasonic PT-DZ21K three-chip DLP projectors from German company LANG AG. It is believed to be the highest number of projectors ever used for a projection mapping project, with an output of over two million lumens. The projectors were installed in six different towers and arranged in a total of 14 clusters: two clusters of two projectors, ten clusters of eight and two clusters of ten. Considering the vast amount of projectors, the green credentials were quite impressive for this project, as a single truck was required to deliver the projection equipment, and all 104 projectors used only 260kW. Boasting 20,000 lumens, with a contrast ratio of 10.000:1 and a 1920x1200 resolution (WUXGA), the PT-DZ21K projectors reproduced razor-sharp and life like images on the façade. All projectors were controlled by five Pandora Box Quad Server systems from coolux, also courtesy of LANG AG. www. maxin10sity.com
The Projection Studio (TPS) recently created a stunning festive projection onto the central tower at Windsor Castle. Ross Ashton and his Projection Studio team were approached by Windsor’s Town Centre Manager, Paul Roach. Ross said: “It was an excellent piece to create in terms of imagination and style, it is also really satisfying that projected art is being recognised both as something that can unify and delight communities and people and - as a result - boost local businesses very cost-effectively.” The castle’s central tower is 20-metres tall, 11-metres wide and highly visible. Very conveniently the size is almost 16:9 in format and the image is being projected by a single Panasonic PZ21K projector fitted with a portrait adaption kit and located in a disused office block opposite. The original sash window where the projector was pointed through has been replaced with an optical glass panel so the projector was completely protected from any external elements and had a clear surface through which to shoot across to the castle wall. The parameters defining the artwork were interesting. The castle itself does not celebrate any festivities until Christmas Eve, however the illumination started a good six weeks prior to that… so Christmas themes were out. Ross instead hit upon the idea of featuring some of the beautiful original stained glass windows at St George’s Chapel within the castle’s grounds. “This glasswork is amazing in its own right and using it for the installation connects the castle and the special projected artwork in a subtle and elegant way,” he explained. A bespoke photo shoot was conducted in the Chapel to gather his own original material. Many of the stained glass images were taken from the North and South quire aisles depicting portraits of monarchs together with heraldic badges, coats of arms and other decorative elements. Ross also photographed the chapel’s intricate ceiling decorations and paintings on the organ pipes, the gold-leaf detail on the metalwork and the vibrant red door, which is also overlaid with gold and metallic features. All these aspects offered plenty of rich and highly textured material. The images - which produced an enormous amount of material - were then edited and composited as animated video files by Paul Chatfield. www.theprojectionstudio.com