In recent years, new technologies have led to more innovative and creative projections at events, allowing planners to fully immerse guests in environments or build objects from light. From dramatic mapping techniques to hologram-like rappers performing on festival stages, here's a look at some of the coolest projections we've ever seen at events.
A new art piece on this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival grounds called "Mirage," envisioned by festival art curator Paul Clemente and created and executed by experiential design and media company Pearl Media Productions, took the form and architecture of a mid-century Palms Springs mansion, standing at 40 feet tall, 80 feet wide, and 100 feet long. A total of 12 zones of high-tech HD projections made it appear that changing activities were taking place inside the home's rooms and its pool. The project required 18 gigabytes of custom content and more than 70 facets of individual video over the course of the six-day festival.
Since the hologram-like projection of Tupac from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival went viral in 2012, its innovator AV Concepts has repeated the stunt. At this year's Rock the Bells festival, dead rappers ODB and Eazy-E appeared to take the stage.
In 2010, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Lynda & Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened with a masquerade gala for 1,000 guests. Art from the Resnick's collection came to life by way of projections under the dinner tent.
As an eye-catching way to show off his new line of street wear in 2012, rapper Lil Wayne used virtual images rather than fabric to outfit a display at fashion expo Magic. The booth on the crowded show floor of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center included two blank mannequins that New Jersey-based company Pearl Media clothed in outfits from the Trukfit collection using 3-D projection mapping. Virtual images of brightly colored T-shirts, patterned pants, and baseball caps were shone onto the white figures, which had shorts, trousers, shirts, and hats molded to their shapes.
To mark the 25th anniversary of Shark Week, Discovery hosted an event in 2012 that put sharks in the pool of the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. They weren't real, of course, but served as convincing projections devised by the planning and production team.Â
In October, the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong celebrated its 50th anniversary with an 800-guest bash. A 3-D projection on the building's façade told the story of the hotel's history, starting with its 1963 opening and detailing its development as a global luxury brand.
When Spain's Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel planned its opening party for the 2013 season, the team brought in French production company High Scream to make the 12-hour party memorable—and highly visual. High Scream’s Romain Pissenem worked with XL Video's Ian Woodall to develop an idea for a projection mapped onto the hotel’s 30- by 20-meter swimming pool, which would become the largest-ever projection screen to date in Ibiza.
In September, Paramount Home Media Distribution hosted a party at L.A.’s California Science Center in celebration of the DVD/Blu-ray release of Star Trek Into Darkness. The Production Elements-produced party had the dramatic built-in decor benefit of NASA’s retired space shuttle Endeavour. And Kinetic Lighting projected a space scene all around it using a combination of digital projectors and moving lights fitted with custom glass gobos.
In 2009, the Annenberg Space for Photography opened in Los Angeles with a tented party where a dramatic scrim hanging overhead showed a kinetic display of still images.
At the Warner Brothers International Television Distribution gala in 2012 at the Warner Brothers Studios lot, digital mapping by Bart Kresa covered the back lot buildings with dramatic projections, including fiery images that furthered the event’s pyro-centric themes.
The line between movie magic and reality was hopelessly blurred at the Warner Brothers party for the American premiere of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2007. Following the film's screening, 900 guests found themselves reimmersed in the wizard world of ancient castles, prophesies, and enchanted fireplaces for the premiere party. In one area attendees could lounge under a ceiling that featured alternating projections of clouds dotting blue skies and stormy weather.
For Walmart's shareholders' meeting earlier this year, Rabbit Hole Creative worked alongside Drury Design Dynamics to create a dramatically mapped stage set that added to the visuals of the annual event held in Arkansas.
