RISING Immerses Audiences with Panasonic Projection

Melbourne’s premier music and art festival relies on Panasonic projection to wow its audiences.

If you wondered what happened to the Melbourne International Arts Festival or, indeed, White Night, then look no further than the RISING, Melbourne’s new premier festival of contemporary art and music.

Some of White Night’s big-picture, pixel- mapping DNA has been carried over to RISING with a number of incredible immersive projection and music installations.

Three in particular, Euphoria, Anthem and Shadow Spirit, encapsulate why large-scale projection is impossible to beat in certain installations such as these.

Melbourne events business, CVP Events, Film & Television supplied and installed the projection, screens and media servers for the three features. Some 56 high-brightness Panasonic projectors from CVP’s inventory were used for the event.

“Panasonic and CVP have been incredible in not just supplying the gear but also understanding what’s required and helping us to respond to artists and what their needs are to make a work happen. The ultimate effect, from an audience perspective, is they’re not thinking about where the video begins and ends or where the projectors are sitting, because they’re in it. That is the dream result from my perspective, and I hope Panasonic’s too,” said Hannah Fox, Co-artistic Director and CEO of RISING.

Euphoria

Artist: Julian Rosefeldt

“Euphoria, is a quite extraordinary work that’s only ever been staged in three other locations in the world,” says CVP’s Managing Director Jon Willis. “It’s a truly immersive film experience. A continuous film runs for one hour, 55 minutes with three specific elements: at ground level are choir screens (the Brooklyn Youth Choir shown in life size), where 18 projectors are stitched together with very short throw lenses. Above the choir are five drummers on large screens that surround the audience; and, finally, the 14m-wide major screen displaying the primary film that tells a story of capitalism. All of the media is projected onto specialised high-gain surfaces that provide an exceptionally faithful colour representation. The Panasonic projectors excel in this regard, the fidelity of the colour is really, really terrific. All of the media is locked together with timecode and all stitched together to produce an immersive experience.”

“The artist Julian Rosefeldt attended the premiere along with his team and they were incredibly complimentary about this particular setup, indicating it was the smoothest and best result they’d seen thus far. That’s a very pleasing testimonial for RISING, for CVP and for Panasonic projection. CVP has been very proud to play our small part in bringing this significant work to life here in Melbourne.”

Shadow Spirit

Curated by Kimberley Moulton

“Shadow Spirit is a series of 12 rooms, each an individual work of art by indigenous artists,” relates Jon Willis: “They’re very disparate, with very different technical requirements and lots of technical challenges insofar as where projectors are placed, levels of brightness, and appropriate lenses. We also co-ordinated the automation system for all of lighting, video and sound.”

“We have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across Australia,” explains Kimberley Moulton, curator of Shadow Spirit. “They have worked across all different mediums and it was a really important part of the development of this show that we provided artists with the opportunity to expand their practice and move into other spaces, and that includes digital art.”

Anthem

Artist: Wu Tsang

“Anthem is a what you might describe as a deceptively simple work” observes Jon Willis. “It’s a large-scale sound and video collaboration between artist Wu Tsang and folk icon Beverly Glenn-Copeland. It relies on its setting inside the cathedral to envelope the audience in magnificent natural reverb. From a visual perspective, two edge-blended Panasonic 20,000-lumen laser projectors point at a huge white drape (18m high by 6m wide). Originally, we thought we would need three projectors to pull this off, but the two Panasonic PT-RZ24K projectors proved to be more than sufficient. Anthem is a powerful work made more powerful by the dramatic setting and cavernous acoustics.”

“Across the three major works of Euphoria, Anthem, and Shadow Spirit there are 56 projectors so you’ve got three different locations for artworks, all different requirements but all covered by Panasonic and all with 100% reliability,” continues Jon. “All of them produce fabulous colours and they have the lens range and flexibility we need to produce those results.”

RISING is Victoria’s flagship festival of music, food, art and culture.

Panasonic and CVP Events were proud to support this year’s amazing festival with a range of visual projection solutions across a number of live sites, to completely transform civic spaces into engaging and immersive digital art.

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