Maxin10sity Leaves Lasting Legacy with Karlsruhe Projection Mapping Spectacular

Maxin10sity, the Hungarian projection mapping specialist, is making its mark in Germany, staging one of the longest projection mapping festivals in the world (August 7 - September 20, 2016) in the city of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg state. In its first week alone, the show entitled Legacy has been by a staggering 90,000 people.

Following on from its successful mapping to celebrate Karlsruhe's 300-year history in 2015, Maxin10sity was once again engaged by event curator, The Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) -- this time to artistically display the rich contents of the Badisches Landesmuseum housed inside the Karlsruhe Palace on the façade of the building, bringing the prehistoric to the present to life and tempting inhabitants and visitors to explore more inside.

Christine Boehm of Karlsruhe Event GmbH (KEG), responsible for the infrastructure, administration, and event planning for the 2016 Legacy projection mapping, comments "The '300 Fragments' event in 2015 was such an incredible success that the city was in no doubt about planning another show for this year. Having delivered such a high quality production which left an indelible impression on the audience, Maxin10sity were the natural choice." ZKM's Nina Wlodarczyk, concurs. "Maxin10sity's work in 2015 was consummately professional, the pinnacle of excellence in terms of graphics, animations, and music and was truly loved by the people."

Answering the brief to virtually open up the doors of the museum to the public through the medium of projection mapping -- and entice them in -- the Maxin10sity team explored the entire exhibition and developed a concept around presenting the different eras of Karlsruhe's fascinating museum by visually representing some of the artifacts.

Bringing its vast experience of working with large scale images and big audiences to the Schlosslichtspiele (palace light projection), Maxin10sity matched the atmosphere for all six eras, cleverly making them easily recognizable both pictorially and musically, while making a departure from other typical portrayals to differentiate the event. The concept met with the approval of the museum, which lent its support to bring the ideas to fruition. Tamás Vaspöri, managing director at Maxin10sity, elaborates: "Every mapping project is unique, as all our shows are bespoke to the building we are working on. However, in this case, the projection had an even closer connection with the palace itself. The artifacts can be seen on the surface of the building exactly where they are located inside the museum before transforming the whole surface into the era which they are from -- so in a sense if was as if the building was revealing its treasures."

The objects were carefully curated from six eras: the Stone Age, Ancient Egypt, Greek Empire, Middle Ages, Ottoman Conquests, and Baden in the 19th Century -- with the Karlsruhe City Foundation Medallion at the start and end of the show, symbolizing the city's deep connection with the artifacts featured. Digitized via a photo scan process, they were then modeled to exact proportions to maintain the integrity of their appearance in the show. Working hand in hand with audio specialists Big Total Audio, with whom Maxin10sity has partnered on a number of mapping projects, the team was able to develop a dramaturgy, telling a story through visual and sound effects which was easy to understand by a big audience. Music plays an equal part in any projection mapping show, and therefore the composition of a bespoke soundtrack to accompany the animated graphics was critical.

"When we compose for a projection mapping event, we always try to adjust the music to the past and present function of the building -- so it requires a totally different approach to composing for other visual media," says Flaviu Ciocan from Big Total Audio. "The really exciting thing is that we usually have to create something completely new; the music and the animation have to work together to tell the whole story of the building and event."

Supporting KEG, ZKM, Maxin10sity, and Big Total Audio were technical contractors AV Active, Rock Shop, and Lang Medientechnik. A project of such scale is not without challenge; however, Maxin10sity together with its partners developed the very best technical solutions for the event in order to ensure the production process went as smoothly as possible -- delivering the final data on time and precision mapping on the architecture -- thanks to rigorous testing of the concept on a scale model of the building to help iterate and perfect the graphics and animations.

The 180m long by 20m projection was ensured by 24 Panasonic 3 chip DLP projectors with a content managed by Pandora Box. Those were rigged in four groups of three projectors in two towers tucked 80m away from the façade, boasting a total resolution close to 11K (10800 x 1080).

Drawing thousands of visitors every evening, the reaction to this year's festival has built on last year's buzz, notes Boehm. "Audiences were wowed by the stunning projections, excited by the fascinating mappings on the huge building façade and impressed by the high quality technical set up. We even noticed people arriving hours before the show to take their place in eager anticipation and enjoy a picnic in front of the castle, creating an amazing festival atmosphere in Karlsruhe throughout the summer."

Karlsruhe is not the first large scale projection mapping that Maxin10sity has seamlessly delivered to critical acclaim. In Germany this year alone, the specialists masterminded two major events for global luxury car manufacturer Audi to launch its brand new Coupe to the world's media at its Ingolstadt HQ, and it has also been appointed as artistic advisor at the upcoming second annual Berlin Festival of Lights, following the success of its projection mapping work at the inaugural event last year.

Vaspöri concludes: "We were thrilled to be asked back to Karlsruhe following 2015's success -- and 2016 has been bigger and better still. We've had an incredible year so far working with some fantastic clients on really innovative and interesting projects -- both big and small. We hope to return to Karlsruhe in 2017 and keep raising the bar, driving true excellence in the projection mapping space."