LOS ANGELES – Visitors to the OUE Skyspace LA outdoor observation deck at the US Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles get a 54th floor preview with the help of 13 Christie DWU600-G projectors. Soaring over 1,000 feet above the city’s financial district with a panoramic, 360-degree view stretching to the Catalina Islands, the iconic tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi, also features the famous outdoor Skyslide for the more adventurous.
More details from Christie (www.christiedigital.com):
“The outdoor observation deck takes up the 69th and 70th floors with a transfer floor – the 54th – being the transition area. You take the elevator up to the 54th floor, and then walk around to another bank of elevators to take you up top. Once there, you can go down the glass slide from the 70th to 69th floor – which is as frightening as it sounds,” said Darren David, Founder & CEO, Stimulant. “The new building owners wanted to make a splash and make an attraction for downtown Los Angeles, so Stimulant designed a series of interactive immersive digital experiences on the 54th floor.”
Working with WorldStage, the project integrator, David said the goal was to create a compelling, unique transition space on the 54th floor and something relevant to the city. “We also wanted to play with people’s perception of direction and create something they couldn’t get at home or on an electronic device,” he added.
Two of three experiences in the transition space use Christie projection. The first is ‘360-Landscape’ – a 50 by 30-foot elliptical projection, mapped and activated by motion. Using a custom tracking system to track each visitor’s direction and velocity of movement, simply walking around the space unlocks animated ‘gems’ on the walls showing points of interest over a real-time generated 3D map of the Los Angeles topography.
“As you approach the wall, a custom railing wired with addressable LEDs reacts to your presence; the gems spin faster and reveal unique animated vignettes. They are all highly stylized like little Easter eggs. The experience alludes to what visitors will see from the observation deck on top,” said David. “We call out 20 different points of interest like Malibu, Disneyland, and LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), and it’s all directionally accurate. We use six Christie G Series projectors along the larger wall and three along the smaller wall. It gets you excited about the outdoor deck.”
The second of three displays is the ‘Infinity Drop’ – a 5-foot wide, LED-enhanced 12-point star-shaped mirror in the floor, which comes to life when visitors walk over to it. Additional mirrors give the effect of dropping off into infinity, leaving the true depth a mystery to guests standing on top of the structural glass. “It plays with the concept of ‘sliding down’ and occupies a vacant former elevator pit.”
The third display is a 21-foot tall by 9-foot wide curved projection surface with another four Christie G Series projectors. A gesture-based experience, the display playfully mimics visitor movement with an effervescent set of bubbles constantly floating up.
“It’s a play on the old shadow walls where you stand in front of a wall, a flash happens, and it leaves a shadow of the shape you were making,” said David. “Our 21st century take lets you dance around and shake off the bubbles that land and cling to you, and after a countdown, the display freezes the bubbles in the shape of your body.”
Choosing Christie projection
“We wanted to go with what we knew would be bulletproof and names we could trust. WorldStage is very familiar with Christie – they did the integration and were amazing partners. We had these odd architectural features to work with and it was important to the client that we took advantage of them as opposed to just filling them in,” David concluded. “With Christie, we knew we had the lensing options and the flexibility of the product to pull it off with the image we needed.”
The Christie G Series 1DLP® projector’s single-lamp design lowers the cost of ownership without compromising image quality and its six-segment color wheel provides lifelike colors. Featuring a host of ProAV features such as Dynamic Contrast, wireless connectivity, a choice of three lenses, input options and 360-degree projection, the Christie G Series delivers the flexibility required in a wide range of applications.
