We found this quite an unusual solution in terms of creativity.
Digital design agency INJOZI [1] recently approached Gearhouse Group [2] with an unusual concept for their Consol Glass [3] campaign for GREY Advertising [4] – all of which are in or near Johannesbug, South Africa.
[5]
The brief was to create a projection surface using the client’s product, in this case glass bottles, to be used as a backdrop for a variety of performance scenarios.
The campaign incorporated a video shoot as well as various activations around the country, so the surface needed to be able display patterns and text effectively as well as be assembled and dissembled quickly and safely for touring purposes.
A number of meetings between the INJOZI team and a combination of Gearhouse expertise from the audio-visual, media, LED screen and set building companies within the Group resulted in an innovative solution.
Aaron Harvey, operations manager for Gearhouse SA’s audio-visual department worked closely with Richard Baker from LEDVision [6] to devise a 3m wide x 2m high ‘led-type’ bottle screen wall. This wall was constructed out of modular panels – transparent acrylic ‘bricks’ with interlocking feet. Each ‘brick’ housed 60 bottles lying on their sides – a total of 1,500 bottles across the surface – with contingency for small size variations in the bottles.
This type of project was a first for the team at Sets Drapes Screens. Although they had previously built a wall-mounted display for Consol, the addition of the acrylic surround came with its own challenges. Acrylic materials contract or expand depending on the temperature and an imperative for this set-up was the precise fit and exact line up of the bottle screen with an R6 LED screen located directly behind it to achieve the desired effect.
Not only did the bottles need to precisely fit the bricks, and the bricks accurately fit into each other, but the horizontal line-up had to be perfectly level as well. SDS created a bespoke platform for the wall which can be levelled by means of adjustable legs and all boxes are marked so that they fit together, in the same way, each time they are assembled.
The INJOZI AV content was displayed on the LED screen behind the bottles and Marcel Wijnberger of Gearhouse Splitbeam created a virtual mask for pixel mapping which enabled each bottle to work as an individual ‘diode’ in the wall. The mask directed the light through the tops of each individual bottle.
The overall effect creates images out of the individual bottle ‘lights’ on a surface that has an additional depth and shine generated by the use of the glass medium – a coup for the Consol brand.