CYPRESS, Calif. – January 31, 2017- The celebrated Festival of Lights from Lyon in southeast France took a trip outside its national borders for a reprise in Quito, Ecuador, as part of the Habitat III United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. And Christie® 3DLP®projectors played a major role in the event by powering two spectacular projection mappings on the facades of the La Merced and the Santo Domingo churches.
Thousands of people turned out at night in the streets of the old quarters of Quito to see the Festival of Lights, a fantastic animation show on the walls of seven historic heritage buildings, including the two churches. This was the first time the festival was staged in Latin America, thanks to a joint initiative supported by the cities of Quito and Lyon, Alianza Francesa, plus six French and Ecuadorian artists.
The City Council of Quito organised several events to coincide with the UN Habitat III conference in the city’s museums and historic churches. To this end, it brought on board the services of the Ecuadorian rental & staging company 3Laser to look after the projections. 3Laser is Ecuador’s foremost name when it comes to staging major large-scale mapping projections.
On the immaculate white walls of the Santo Domingo monastery, 3Laser projected images from pre-Columbian, baroque and contemporary art designed by the French artist Laurent Langlois and the Ecuadorian artist Belén Mena.
The mapping was carried out over a projection surface measuring 50 by 30 metres using three Christie 3DLP technology 20,000 lumen projectors. Lasting approximately five minutes, the projection was repeated continuously throughout the evening from 7 pm until midnight.
For the mapping on the facade of the La Merced monastery, 3Laser projected an animation based on the history of the universe by the artists Jerôme Donna and Simon Milleret-Godet. Called Laniakea, it was based on images of galaxies, stars and planets and completely ‘wowed' the audience, many of whom recorded the show on cell phones to preserve the memory.
To enable the second projection mapping on a surface area measuring 45 by 30 metres, another four 20,000 lumen projectors with Christie 3DLP technology were called for. These were located in the shopping mall across from the monastery at a throw distance of 50 metres. In this case, the animation lasted six minutes and was also repeated in loop until midnight.
The team of experts at 3Laser had previously taken exact measurements of the churches on which the animations were going to be projected so that they would adapt perfectly to the buildings’ complex shapes and silhouettes. Ángel Cuesta, director of 3Laser, explained that “…this posed a huge challenge because the churches are so irregular, which means that adapting the images to the exact shape of the facades, had to be spot on.”
That said, the experience and skill of the 3Laser team and the proven reliability and brightness of the Christie projectors ensured that everything went off smoothly and the audience for the animations were able to thoroughly enjoy the spectacular projections in Quito’s historic centre, declared a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO.
“The thing that most impressed the public was the brightness of the colours and how the facades of the churches were completely transformed with deep reds or bright blue skies,” Ángel Cuesta said. “Another factor to bear in mind is that there is a lot of air contamination in the centre of Quito. That being said, the performance of the projectors was excellent and in the case of La Merced their compact size allowed us to install them in the small windows of the shopping centre. In short, the projections were a resounding success and both the general public as well as the press had only good things to say about the show.”
