Ecuador. The famous Festival of Lights of Lyon (southeast of France) has left its borders to be reproduced in Quito (Ecuador) within the framework of the United Nations Habitat III Conference on housing and sustainable urban development.
Thousands of people gathered at night in the streets of the historic center of Quito to witness the Festival of Lights, an animation show on walls that was held in seven heritage buildings, including the two churches mentioned, and that was made for the first time in Latin America, with the support of the municipalities of Quito and Lyon, the Alliance Française, and six French and Ecuadorian artists.
The Municipality of Quito, which on the occasion of the UN Habitat III conference held several events in the museums and churches of downtown Quito, chose the Ecuadorian rental & staging company 3Laser to take charge of the projections. It is the reference company in Ecuador when it comes to making large-scale projection mappings.
On the white façade of the convent of Santo Domingo, 3Laser projected figures of pre-Columbian art, Baroque art and contemporary art by the French artist Laurent Langlois and the Ecuadorian artist Belén Mena.
This mapping was done on a projection surface of 50 x 30 meters with three projectors of 20,000 lumens of Christie 3DLP technology. The screening lasted five minutes and was repeated continuously throughout the night from 7 p.m. to 24 p.m.
In the case of the mapping in the convent of La Merced, 3Laser projected an animation based on the history of the universe by the artists Jerôme Donna and Simon Milleret-Godet. With the name of Laniakea, the animation was based on images of galaxies, stars and planets, and left the attendees who recorded the show with their cell phones speechless.
To make this mapping possible on an area of 45 by 30 meters, four other projectors of 20,000 lumens of Christie 3DLP technology were needed, which were located on the terrace of a shopping center in front of the façade at a projection distance of 50 meters. In this case, each pass lasted six minutes and was repeated continuously until 12 o'clock at night.
The technical team of 3Laser made a previous measurement of the fachadEcuadoras of the churches on which the animations were created so that each of them adapted perfectly to the shapes and volumes of the buildings. "In that sense, the challenge was great because the churches are very irregular surfaces, so you have to perfectly adapt the images to the morphology of the facades," explains Ángel Cuesta, director of 3Laser.
But the skill of the 3Laser team and the reliability and luminosity of Christie's projectors made everything go smoothly and that the spectators could enjoy stunning projections in an environment as spectacular as the historic center of Quito, declared a Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
"What impressed the audience the most was the brightness of the colors and how the entire facades were transformed into bright reds or completely blue skies," says Ángel Cuesta. "On the other hand, the center of Quito has a high pollution and that was a challenge, but still the projectors had a great performance and their small size allowed us, in the case of La Merced, to install them in very small windows of the shopping center. All in all, the screenings were a total success and both people and the press made absolutely positive comments."
