King of Thailand’s birthday

On the occasion of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand's 82nd birthday in December 2009, a massive celebratory central event was held at the Anantha Samakhom Throne Hall.

Spanning a week long, the star of the event itself was the throne hall which effectively became the backdrop of a video installation show, replete with a huge orchestra cast of 128 international musicians and a choir of the best singers in Thailand. The nightly one hour show combined past and present images of the King, his social projects as well as custom made 3D animations of natural and cultural heritage of Thailand.

CT was contracted by Kaiser Communications to provide the projectors and video link for the event. Berlin artist Philipp Geist was commissioned to provide content for the show.

The design of the show billed as "4D visual light and sound" called for projecting video content and images on to the external façade of the throne hall. The Throne Hall itself is a two storey building in the style of italian renaissance/ neo classic architecture. It measures 112.50m in width and 49.5 meters in height, with a large dome in the centre surrounded by six smaller domes.

CT Asia worked with Kaiser for over three months on the project. "The huge surface of the throne hall made it almost impossible for ordinary projectors to cover and still achieve an acceptable level of brightness," said Rony Xu, General Manger Singapore, CT Asia. "A demonstration was done for the client and they agreed that only the Barco XLM HD30 is up for the task.”

A total of four Barco XLM HD30 was used to cover the entire front facade of the throne hall, centrally managed with Barco's Projector Toolset. Video link from playback to projectors was done through fiber optical system and a DVI matrix system was employed to provide switching between primary and backup playback system.

To avoid distorting the video content and images, a projection mapping technique had to be built around compositing the actual façade of the throne hall itself. A custom built playback system was responsible for the mapping of the images onto the composite itself. By fine tuning the vectors/ wireframe on the composite, distortion is kept to a minimum.

The heady mix of orchestra music, tunes sung by a choir and the larger than life images of the revered King on the throne hall was not lost on the audience. They were woken up from their reverie by the mellifluous popping of fireworks that signified the end to the nightly show. The show was seen by at least one million people over the week.