DIGITAL PROJECTION MAPPING ‘WOWS’

06 Jun DIGITAL PROJECTION MAPPING ‘WOWS’

Projection Digital Mapping Systems

There’s so much exciting new digital technology around the world and we wanted to bring you this rather novel approach to digital art from a selection of projects – the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston, USA and closer to home here in Sydney and Perth, Western Australia.

Projection digital mapping systems create a visual showcase on buildings and events, transforming the normal daytime imagery into a nighttime spectacle. Using a combination of camera systems, audio, video processing and media players, the technology can create as far as the imagination wants to go.

Here are 3 examples of this digital mapping showing how complexity, scale and architecture can all be enhanced with the help of this impressive technology.

Brookfield Place, Perth WA & Sydney

In 2018 you may have seen a creative extravaganza projected onto four building façades in Brookfield Place in Perth, as well as the WA Trustees heritage façade on St Georges Terrace. Using a palette of 256 colours, the designs resembled old-school video games such as Jungle Jumble, Cyber City, Sky Skater, Weird World and Bubble Bay. These successfully achieved both funky and wow factor in spades.

City of Cambridge Library, Boston Massachusets, USA 

Watch the youtube video here and be amazed!

To relay the digital projection images they created a camera mounted over 5 metres off the ground, 100 metres back form the building. The content changes depending on the event or the season, and through carefully crafted, scheduled content, the building changes its persona on a regular basis. Content follows the seasons – such as leaves in the Autumn/Fall, Halloween ghostly ghouls, seasonal Christmas messages. Designers specialising in converting 2D to 3D transfer canvass art to digital content and the great features of this contemporary art statement is that it can keep evolving over time.

The building draws crowds and after an initial launch event for 5000 spectators, still attracts much attention.

Hoover Dam, USA

Scale is clearly no barrier to this technology – you only have to look at this impressive image of the Hoover Dam to see the full capabilities of digital mapping projection technology! Creating the projection mapping on the Hoover Dam’s scale faces many challenges – especially given it’s size. The 12,800 square-metre surface of the Hoover Dam featured numerous angles and curves, widening from bottom to top. The projection tower was positioned on a site downriver from the face of the dam. It was the safest location and positioned at the best angle from the dam. Other challenges included ensuring the images had a consistent luminance, and the images coming from numerous projectors had to be blended so they created one stunning image.

With the projection tower located almost 7500m away from the surface, the team had to use 7.5-11.2 zoom lenses to span the distance and ensure pristine image quality. Sixty Barco projectors were set up in three banks, with six projectors required to create each image. All images were seamlessly blended to create a single 4592 x 2048 pixel image generating an astonishing 1.17 million lumens.

The Final Wrap

There’s no doubt that digital signage packs a punch. To add projection mapping to your current digital signage marketing suite, the Yap!digital team are on hand to give you our non-biased recommendations. We are not affiliated to any brands which gives us maximum flexibility to design a solution based on the technology that fits your requirements the best.

Our Yap!digital team will also bring you their experience of static and digital signage solutions will ensure that your customers and users have an outstanding experience next time they visit you.

We’re ready to start talking! Speak up now about your next project or idea.

T + 61 8 9274 5151 or tim@yapdigital.com.au

Thanks to Electric Canvas for the images of WA.