The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver Opening Ceremonies

I am writing this while watching the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, however I won’t post it until the morning.  It will probably take that long to really put my amazement into words.  I love watching the Winter Olympics no matter what, but this year the opening ceremonies are amazing.  This production is amazingly beautiful and it is technically spectacular.

What really takes the cake here are the projections.  Turning the entire stadium into a projection surface was just beautiful.  From the floor of the stadium to every audience member who was given a white poncho it was a truly all inclusive and all encompassing performance.  The integration of imagery and acting and dance  was incredible.  The special effects that gave three-dimensionality to the 2D elements like the whales were beautiful.

Projected Whales with 3D elements like steam from their blowholes

The use of various fabrics and shapes as projection surfaces was pretty wild.  When was the last time you grew trees in the middle of an indoor stadium?  Not only were they trees but totem poles as well.

Fabric "trees" provide an amazing projection surface.

Of course how can we forget that they kicked the whole thing off with one man rapping the floor with his staff and rings of “electricity” emanated out along the floor.

Kicking off the celebration and the amazing effects!

It really amazes me that, given the state of the world today we are still capable of coming together as friends in competition.  Sure there are some countries that seem to still hold grudges against eachother, but they seem to put most of that aside to come and compete in the Olympics.  It is so great that we can come together as a global community, even if it only for sixteen days.  Good luck to all the athletes.

Citius, Altius, Fortius. – Swifter, Higher, Stronger.

I was introduced to the Vectorial Elevation Project by Jim from Jim On Light.  The project is an interactive art installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.  As a lighting professional I have to say that it is pretty darn impressive piece of art and engineering to be able to make something like this work.  The installation consists of twenty 10KW Syncrolite moving lights that are connected to a DMX controller which is fed information from their servers which are driven by Google Earth.

If you head over to their website you can design your own lighting look using a Google Earth interface.  You can point the lights almost however you want.  The system prevents you from shining the lights at nearby buildings and into airplane flight paths.  The interface it pretty straight-forward, just select the lights you want and point there where you want.  Then you submit your design into the system and when your design is displayed they photograph it and post it on a web-page for you.  You can also watch a live feed of the display on their site.

So, I figured I would try it out and I designed a display dedicated to my small blog following.  Here are a couple images, the first is a rendering of my design and the second is what it actually looked like last night.

IceWolf's Display Rendering

IceWolf's Live Show

If you want to see more vantage points of my display you can at this webpage.  If you go build your own display after reading this, please post a link back here so that I can see!  Now go have fun and create some art!