We don’t usually cover any case studies outside of EMEA, but when it is this “cool” we have to call it to your attention.
Christie once again is partnering with the famous U.S. retailer Barneys to create a one-of-a-kind holiday window display on New York City’s glamorous Madison Avenue.
Barneys are visionaries in designing retail experience for today’s savvy consumer, using technology and creativity to enrich their brand in the age of bricks vs clicks.
This Christmas season NYC retailer used Christie’s digital lighting effects to map to a special-ordered Dale Chihuly glass sculpture entitled Winter Brilliance. Chihuly has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art and his work is included in more than 200 museum collections worldwide.
Winter Brilliance combines several star-like chandeliers and towers within a darkened window space, giving the impression of ice crystals frozen midair. It marks the first time Chihuly has used 3D digital mapping and choreographed lighting to illuminate an installation.
At Barney’s, this choreographed projection of light creates the illusion of ice, snow, and moonlight, adding a fluid and kinetic quality to the sculpture.
The lighting cycle starts with pure white before moving into a sequence of snow flurries, ending in fiery display of red and yellow light projected onto the 700 hand-blown glass “icicle” elements. The scene is an interpretation of fire and ice, relating to the heating and cooling of the glass making process. The choreographed projection is accompanied by a modern adaptation of a score by Claude Debussy, one of Chihuly’s favorite composers.
Christie is also present in a second holiday window display at Barneys, Arctic Chase, created in partnership with Lexus, that features penguins perched atop miniature cars navigating a winding winter road. An animated short film by Invisible Light Network entitled Stay Cool is shown on a video wall composed of 2X4 Christie FHD461-X flat panels.
A third window display features slowly evolving ice castles, while a fourth display treats pedestrians to live ice carving demonstrations. Altogether, the windows produce an immersive visual narrative that engages pedestrians in a dramatic way, creates conversation, and leads them into the store.
The holiday windows will be on view at Barneys New York flagship store through January 3, 2016.
Dennis Freedman, creative director, Barneys New York, notes “In addition to their high-performance technologies, Christie brought a lot value and expertise from the conceptual and creative perspective, and it has worked out to be an incredible collaboration. To watch how they work to create the content and the effects was extraordinary.”
“Projection mapping upon 700 pieces of hand-blown glass has never been done before and is very difficult to replicate. It’s an enormously creative and technical accomplishment, and is the kind of successful ‘art-meets-retail experience’ that we’ll see emerging all over the world in the next few years,” explains Sean James, VP, Christie Global Professional Services.
Through its Christie THREE SIXTY unit, Christie provides best-of-class experience design, content creation and content management solutions for next-generation digital media installations.
This Christie THREE SIXTY team developed digital 3D lighting experience concepts and content for Chihuly to review and approve. This was all new technology for Chihuly and his team and Christie reports he was both surprised and happy with the results.