Take a Dutch electronics company with a desire to appeal to the gay consumer. Add a gay marketing agency, a gay celebrity photographer and a gay music icon's nonprofit, and you'd have Philips' Art Meets Technology event. Held at Tribute, a high-tech downtown space, the event brought Philips together with Osmosis Medialab, an agency that specializes in addressing gays and lesbians, to formally kick off Philips' marketing campaign to gay consumers.
Shawn Thomson, Osmosis' co-founder and creative director, added two important elements to the event: David LaChapelle, whose photographs and music videos he directed were displayed on 18 of Philips' flat-screen TVs placed around the venue, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the designated beneficiary of the event's silent auction proceeds. (LaChapelle said in a statement that the design of Philips televisions is "remarkably pure," making them the ideal products to show off his photographs and music videos in a public exhibit the following day.)
Production designer Ron Norsworthy—known mostly for his work on music videos and TV commercials—furnished Tribute's all-white interior with white furniture, transparent chairs and tables and low lanterns, and then illuminated the space with a bright palette of different colors using Tribute's high-tech lighting system. John, who had performed at the Robin Hood Foundation's benefit the previous night, arrived at 8:45 PM in a white Ecko track suit. The event—packed with guests of LaChapelle, John's foundation and members of the mainstream and gay press—brought in more than $100,000 for John's nonprofit.
—Suzanne Ito
Shawn Thomson, Osmosis' co-founder and creative director, added two important elements to the event: David LaChapelle, whose photographs and music videos he directed were displayed on 18 of Philips' flat-screen TVs placed around the venue, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the designated beneficiary of the event's silent auction proceeds. (LaChapelle said in a statement that the design of Philips televisions is "remarkably pure," making them the ideal products to show off his photographs and music videos in a public exhibit the following day.)
Production designer Ron Norsworthy—known mostly for his work on music videos and TV commercials—furnished Tribute's all-white interior with white furniture, transparent chairs and tables and low lanterns, and then illuminated the space with a bright palette of different colors using Tribute's high-tech lighting system. John, who had performed at the Robin Hood Foundation's benefit the previous night, arrived at 8:45 PM in a white Ecko track suit. The event—packed with guests of LaChapelle, John's foundation and members of the mainstream and gay press—brought in more than $100,000 for John's nonprofit.
—Suzanne Ito
Music videos directed by David LaChapelle played on Philips flat-screen TVs for an event benefitting the Elton John AIDS Foundation at Tribute.
Two more TVs were installed under the hood of a white car.
Set designer Ron Norsworthy brought intimacy to the space by suspending low lanterns from the high ceilings.
More screens were displayed atop clear tables.
