The Czech Rudolfinum auditorium serves as the stage for the world's longest immersive videomapping

The result of an international collaboration project to celebrate the 190 years of the Ceska Sporitelna bank and its association with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, The Macula has created an immersive experience with futuristic visuals, accompanied by the live symphonies of this orchestra and 45 minutes long.

The Macula, Czech videomapping specialist, has practically 'hypnotized' with its technology some six hundred private guests who recently came to the Rudolfinum music auditorium in Prague to enjoy SIM/Nebula, a videomapping show, of 45 minutes long (the largest in the world to date), in which futuristic and cybernetic visual elements were displayed in time with the live acoustic waves of the Czech Philharmonic's classical symphonies, directed by international Jiří Bělohlávek, former conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

This is the first immersive videomapping show held in the Czech Republic, with the participation of a live orchestra composed of 118 musicians and projections on all four sides of the auditorium (frontal, right and left side and roof) over a long period of time, fruit of an international project that uses technological and creative elements of projectionmapping, VFX y motion graphics.

The implementation of this project is based on the commission made by Ceska Sporitelna, the largest bank in the Czech Republic, to The Macula to celebrate their 190 years of experience and his new association with the Philharmonic of this country.

As Josef Havelka points out, marketing director of this financial institution, “We wanted to offer our clients and guests an unforgettable experience, witnessing a unique sound with an exciting visual spectacle in one of the oldest concert halls in Europe, that The Macula has provided with greatness”.

Live and on four fronts

This show is possibly, as its creators point out, the longest videomapping ever created, with unique features that are pioneers in live projection, and which has had the collaboration of eleven international artists from the United Kingdom, France, Swiss, Türkiye, Slovakia and, of course, Czech Republic.

SEM/Nebula content is divided into seven themes (materia, technology, message, mission, New World, rendezvous and birth), that express visual futuristic poems and that shape the emergence of a cybernetic organism by telling its time code in the acoustic waves of live classical music.

To project on four different surfaces, The Macula has used ten digital projectors from the Belgian firm Barco, specifically, four model HDX-W20 Flex 3-chip DLP WUXGA (each one with 20.000 lumens); dos FLM- R22 SXGA + (con 22.000 lumens) and four SLM-R12 Performer SXGA systems (of 12.000 lumens).

The systems are managed with audiovisual software in real time Resolume Arena 4, on two custom media servers for native mixing. This program allows you to launch video clips, audio or video with audio; mix them, manipulate them, apply effects to them and display the result for a live performance or to record it.

The four Barco HDX projectors in quadrant design project content on the main façade, while the FLM models are dedicated to projecting to the sides. To further enhance the immersive experience, the four SLM projectors project onto the ceiling of the Rudolfinum auditorium.

When all the compositions were mixed, the resolution reached 16.000 pixels to 80.000 frames (30fps). For this production, The Macula relied on Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects to create the content and ensure seamless transitions between 3D and 2D.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/138894725[/vimeo]