GLOW Eindhoven

GLOW Eindhoven wows thousands with mapping masterclass 16 Christie laser projectors power striking display from Ocubo depicting Heart, Light and Time

The striking façade of the Augustijnenkerk became a canvas of light and color at GLOW Eindhoven. A total of 16 20,000 lumens Christie HS Series projectors – supplied by Sahara Benelux – were used to power stunning animated content from Ocubo, which was created to celebrate the newly opened DOMUSDELA, a historic Eindhoven complex. A total of 770,000 visitors were welcomed to the festival over eight days.

Heart, Light and Time – how do you encapsulate these powerful facets of the human experience and convey them effectively to captivate an audience of thousands? That was the onerous challenge that creative international studio Ocubo Criatievo encountered when it took on the task of depicting a tryptic of these three aspects at GLOW Eindhoven. At the annual international festival, revellers descended upon the city to witness an array of spectacular artworks on a guided tour throughout a 5km route, with projection mapping content taking center stage.

GLOW is an annual light art exhibition in the city of Eindhoven, Netherlands, featuring an array of talented local, national and international light artists showing off their skills in works across the city – all connected by a walking route. Returning to GLOW for 2019, Ocubo’s mapping expertise served as a dual celebration – acting as the starting point of the festival and marking the reopening of the Domus Dela complex – a restoration of the former Paterskerk (now Augustijnenkerk) and the Mariënhage monastery in the center of Eindhoven, which reopened on November 8, 2019. The former church and chapel have been opened as ceremonial houses, and the monastery is now a 69-room hotel, complete with meeting rooms and brasserie.

Inspired by the three metaphors created for Domus Dela, the start of the GLOW Festival route was to meditate on aspects of Heart, Light and Time, with these concepts associated to Love, Faith and Hope respectively. With this triptych artwork of projection mapping, it was hoped to reflect not just on Mariënhage’s storied heritage, but also highlight the new vision for Domus Dela complex through this three-part experience.

Bringing the heart

The front of the Augustijnenkerk building, complete with its towering Sacred Heart statue – or as the people of Eindhoven affectionately call it “Jezus Waaghals,” or “Jesus the Daredevil” in English – formed a memorable opening gambit for this mapping spectacle. Twelve Christie HS Series projectors provided by Sahara Benelux were used to map onto the front of the Augustijnenkerk, a 19th century former church, as part of the Heart metaphor. This display aimed to connote the varied forms of love as experienced by humans – whether that be in the form of passion, devotion, romanticism or even madness. Bold reds and blues pulsed in time with carefully coordinated musical accompaniment in the evocative five-minute performance.

“The challenge is always the dark stones of these kinds of buildings,” says Robin Van Der Heiden, Dealer Manager at Sahara Benelux, who hailed Christie BoldColor Technology as creating the color balance needed to accurately reproduce colorful images for the project, without sacrificing brightness. “The color is perfect. With the BoldColor Technology we are able to produce all colors, including white. The HS Series projector is a compact model that can easily be installed on site.”

Let there be Light

At the rear of Augustijnenkerk, the medium of light is expressed using four 20,000 lumens Christie HS Series projectors with the mapping focused on the three sets of iconic stained glass that form the façade of the building, providing a unique effect. The striking architecture – combined with the vibrant mapping performance – depicted humanity’s inner faith. “New to this project was the combination of light coming from inside to out (of the buildings), and a projection on the outside,” says Ronald Romakers, director of GLOW. “In the early days it was impossible to do that, but with these powerful Christie projectors, it works.”

Time

The Dela headquarters building signalled the end of GLOW’s official 5km route, taking approximately two hours for audiences to absorb from start to finish. At the Dela headquarters building, a lighting and smoke installation aimed to convey the concept of Time, aligned with Hope. The building’s staircase was transformed into an evolving artwork, inspired by the horizontal stripes in the paintings of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Gradually the smoke spread across multiple floors, diffusing the light and coloring the glass walls with a unique effect.

Each of the Light, Heart and Time exhibits featured a ‘Heartbeat’ – a musical soundtrack – which tied the displays together Three separate songs were recorded by the same artist for the occasion – one for each of the Light, Heart and Time areas – in order to further unify the Triptych Metaphor.

The festival welcomed 770,000 visitors over eight days, with the festival presenting a wide array of light art works. Work is already well underway for the 2020 iteration of Glow Eindhoven, in what will be its 15th anniversary – themed ‘Urban Skin’ running November 7 to 14, 2020. GLOW Eindhoven will be all about every facet of this theme: from architecture to nature, from centre to urban district, from resident to visitor.