Season of Light brightens up Helsinki’s dark winter nights with Barco
Kortrijk, Belgium, 29 January 2010. Barco, a global leader in projection technology, is proud to announce that Finland's Season of Light festival used two Barco XLM HD30 projectors to illuminate Senate Square in Helsinki. The festival took place early January and presented two façade light-art installations created by renowned lighting designer Mikki Kunttu.
Season of Light is an annual light-art festival in Helsinki, Finland, and is the brightest urban event in the Baltic region. During the dark winter month of January, two façade light performances gave the country's capital an exciting atmosphere. Both installations, “Reflections” at Senate Square and “Oratoribus” at Parliament House, were created by renowned lighting designer Mikki Kunttu. He is most known for his lighting design for the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, but he designs lights and stages for theatres, ballets, operas, dance events and television shows all over Europe.The performance at Senate Square is a 15 minute story, projected on the façade of the Helsinki Cathedral, the city's main cathedral. “Reflections” is a voyage through time into the past and onwards into a world of fantasy. Senate Square and its surroundings return to the year 1852 when the St Nicholas church – now Helsinki Cathedral – was inaugurated. Starting with history, the light installation transforms into a world of fantasy in which imaginary vines climb up the columns of the cathedral, while various lights, colors, shadows and textures play across the surfaces.
“We used two Barco XLM HD30 projectors to project the images onto the façade of the cathedral, one for the upper half and one for the lower part,” explains Mikki Kunttu. “The performance consisted of three parts: The first was built around an old photo of the cathedral, the second dealt with abstract shapes and the third started with water theme and transformed the building into "an ice castle". The biggest challenge of this project was to match this full HD content with the architectural details of the cathedral and this over a 150 meter projection distance. The XLM HD30's were perfect for this kind of installation; they had the power and brightness we were looking for. The result was mind-blowing.”
Barco's XLM HD30 projector is a DLP® projector with a native wide-screen aspect ratio, native 2048 x 1080 resolution and light output of 30,000 center lumens, the XLM HD30 projector is ideally suited to ultra wide-screen and HD projections. With its functional design, fully sealed DMD engine and adjustable convergence system, the XLM HD30 projector is purpose built to work around the clock, making it ideal for use in the demanding rental & staging and extreme events markets.
About Barco
Barco, a global technology company, designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. Barco has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.
Barco (NYSE Euronext Brussels: BAR) is active in more than 90 countries with about 3100 employees worldwide. Barco posted sales of 725 million euro in 2008.
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