Light Marketing Demo by @ChristieDigital & Microsoft
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Picture retailers projecting advertisements and discount coupons on shoppers’ clothing as they pass their stores in shopping malls.
That’s one of the possibilities shown by Christie and Microsoft who demonstrated how Kinect and Christie projectors can work together to launch the next generation of dynamic advertising at the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
They created ‘Light Marketing’, which are warped images and advertisements projected on visitors in real time as they move through a space. Another project, ‘Light Mural’, was an interactive mural that senses depth changes and comes to life with pop-up images.
Christie and Microsoft brought mixed-reality technologies to the beachfront in Cannes, France, for the event. Visitors to the Microsoft Beach Club experienced the latest in projection mapping collaborations via the two customized projects using Microsoft Kinect technology and Christie projectors and software.
The ‘Light Marketing’ project turned accommodating visitors into living billboards as they moved around a pavilion.
“Kinect is pretty much a room scale technology,” says Rick Barraza, design strategy and creative engineering, Partner Catalyst Group, Microsoft. “It tracks up to six people at 30 frames a second and with 25 points of articulation on a person’s joints. It is about movements in space. We’re able to turn people into living billboards.”
Chad Faragher, senior product developer, software, Christie, says, “‘Light Marketing’ can be used to show real-time content on people for shopping, concerts or installations and the point was to make it seem like a magical experience.”
The second project – ‘Light Mural’ − was a 10’ x 4’ animated scene of beach life featuring Kinect and one Christie DWU951-Q projector with an ultra-short throw lens. When touched, the interactive mural sensed depth changes and came to life with pop-up images, basically making ordinary light into ‘smart light.’
Christie engineers spent three months working with Microsoft on the “Light Marketing’ and ‘Light Mural’ projects and overcame numerous environmental challenges including hot weather, high ambient light, salty air, no roof and a wooden floor that vibrated when walked on.
Overall, the projects were a success for both Microsoft and Christie.
“It was great working with Christie because they try to explore what projection can do,” says Barraza. “They’re very creative people and there is a big tradition in cinema of how technology is used to tell stories better. The project was a fascinating marriage between technology and creativity; engineers worked to overcome all these challenges and the artists providing content were able to use technology in a way that could inspire storytellers in museums, theme parks and retail spaces.”
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