Christie® and Microsoft brought mixed-reality technologies to the beachfront in
Cannes, where visitors to the Microsoft Beach Club experienced the latest in
projection mapping collaborations thanks to customized projects which used
Microsoft Kinect technology (which tracks movements) with Christie projectors and
software. The projects were customized for Microsoft Beach Club during the 2015
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity where the theme of
#EmpowerCreativity investigated turning great ideas into reality.
Housed in a white-tented pavilion on the beach, Christie and Microsoft displayed two
projects designed to show how Kinect and Christie projectors can be combined to
inspire a creative space. Using Microsoft Kinect and a Christie Mirage HD14K-M
projector, the first project, dubbed ’Light Marketing,’ warped images onto visitors in
real time as they entered and moved around the pavilion.
“Kinect is pretty much a room scale technology,’ explained Rick Barraza, design
strategy and creative engineering, Partner Catalyst Group, Microsoft. “It tracks up
to six people at 30 frames a second and with 25 points of articulation on a person’s
joints. It is about movements in space. We’re able to turn people into living
billboards.’
“”Light Marketing’ can be used to show real-time content on people for shopping,
concerts or installations and the point was to make it seem like a magical
experience,’ added Chad Faragher, senior product developer, Software, Christie.
The second project “Light Mural’ was a 10-foot by 4-foot animated scene of beach
life featuring Kinect, one Christie DWU951-Q projector with an ultra-short throw
lens. When touched, the interactive mural sensed depth changes and came to life
with pop-up images.
“We were interested in mixing Kinect with projection to create a perception-based
experience,’ commented Barraza. “When you mix projectors with a camera that can
see and understand reality, dumb light becomes smart light, which is why I love
this partnership with Christie.’
Christie engineers spent three months working with Microsoft on the “Light
Marketing’ and “Light Mural’ projects and overcame numerous environmental
challenges including hot weather, high ambient light, salty air, no roof and a
wooden floor that vibrated when walked on.
“Christie needed to provide high brightness projectors that could compete against
the high ambient light here. We also had a lot of heat to deal with, and these
projectors were asked to be enclosed away in boxes so we needed to provide
projectors that could compete in this environment and still continue to operate,’
said Faragher.
Overall, the projects were a success for both Microsoft and Christie. “It was great
working with Christie because they try to explore what projection can do. They’re
very creative people and there is a big tradition in cinema of how technology is
used to tell stories better. The project was a fascinating marriage between
technology and creativity; engineers worked to overcome all these challenges and
the artists providing content were able to use technology in a way that could inspire
storytellers in museums, theme parks and retail spaces,’ Barraza concluded.
