Many people will never have experienced the total sensory immersion and true to life scale that is possible within an Illuminarium, so we wanted to ask LAB at Rockwell Group’s Director of Design Dan Marino and Director of Technology David Tracy exactly how technology has enabled this entirely new form of interactive theater.
Give us the basics. What is involved in making an experience like WILD: A Safari Experience possible?
The “simplest” explanation for all of this incredibly complex technology is this: Through bleeding edge projection technology, spatial audio systems, and haptic technology, audiences will be transported to places they may never see in real life, while experiencing a new type of connected experience with others.
The filmed content, which was captured on location in Africa by RadicalMedia, as well as the interactivity is what sets Illuminarium apart.
To us, technology is the tool not the medium.
Advanced laser projection systems surround visitors in 360° of content at resolutions many times higher than HD. We're combining brand new technologies that have never been used like this before to create a choreographed experience that feels personalized for visitors, all at once.
Rockwell Group has been working with RadicalMedia on this project. How would you describe the LAB’s role?
The LAB designed the system architecture for the interactivity—you could say we’re the co-pilots. The layer that we’re responsible for is woven into a sophisticated ecosystem of hardware to generate real time graphics, audio, and haptics. For example, how the floor reacts to guests’ footsteps, or how the animals seem to interact with the audience.
In addition to enabling visitor interaction with the content, this sensing layer empowers Illuminarium to understand how guests engage with the space. A robust software back-end provides a powerful dashboard for monitoring, diagnostics, analytics, and reporting. We can track up to 400 people at a time.
Illuminarium will be open from 9 a.m. to midnight, which means there’s an opportunity for day-parting. To that end, the LAB has also developed content for a bar and lounge in a smaller theater called The Bar at Illuminarium, which is separate from the main spectacle. Tell us about that.
This was an exciting challenge for us and called on the skills of our motion graphic designers, interactivity designers, and content developers. It’s one of the largest examples of real-time rendered content at this scale. Ranging from luminous crystal caves to illustrative jungles, the LAB designed 7 unique worlds, each offering an opportunity to gather in far-flung and fantastical locations.
Each environment evolves throughout the night to deliver changing destinations rendered in real-time.
For example, guests might feel like they’re floating on billowing clouds overlooking a sunset; the following night, they might be enveloped by a futuristic street in Tokyo, complete with smoke, lights swaying in the wind, fabric waving—a near-real but abstracted experience.
on Vimeo.