Project Profiles: Barneys Lights Up Massive Holiday Display Using MicroTiles

November 15, 2012 by Dave Haynes

The holiday season is underway in New York City and the windows of the larger, flashier stores are getting dressed up once again.

One of the most, at least seemingly, ambitious projects this year appears to be a massive multimedia installation at Barneys. The fashion retailer’s flagship store at 660 Madison Avenue has several configurations of  Christie  MicroTiles lighting up the windows. In all, the project uses 425 Tiles.

The Electric Holiday display is a partnership between The Walt Disney Company, Barneys New York, and Christie. There is a digitally-animated, moving art short featuring Minnie, Mickey, Goofy, and Daisy Duck (where’s the Donald???) wearing designer clothes. The short is part of a lengthier light show.

The project turned on yesterday and will run past New Year’s Day, and the loop is steady. Because the exhibit uses Tiles, the exhibit doesn’t necessarily have to wait for darkness to spark up. The display tech deals very nicely with direct light.

“We are thrilled to be working with the experts at Christie on Disney Electric Holiday Windows at Barneys New York. Disney and Barneys wanted to create a visually stunning window display unlike any other and the Christie MicroTiles – with their high resolution, shallow depth, virtually seamless canvas and true-to-life image quality – made that possible. Utilizing 565 square feet of MicroTiles and 50 million pixels we are able to create a brilliant light and video show that will light up Madison Ave throughout the Holidays,” says Lylle Breier, SVP World Wide Special Events, Walt Disney Studios, in a remarkably unnatural quote.

“‘Electric Holiday’ is a stellar combination of state-of-the art animation, lights, music, and fashion that will encompass eight windows of Barneys New York’s Madison Avenue store and represents one of the most complex combinations of shapes, resolution, size and depth of field ever used with the Christie MicroTiles,” adds Sean James, vice president, Managed Services, Christie. “From the realization of the high-concept moving art short to the multi-layered arrangement of MicroTiles, it is a triumph of technical, creative and artistic vision never seen before on a holiday window display.”

James’ team did the technical consult, from concept finalization, to pre-staging, to on-site set-up. Each window has an array of Christie MicroTiles in a staggered, multi-layer set-up. The Tiles are surrounded by bright meshes of lights that will be synchronized with the music.

The kit of parts:

· 565 square feet of Christie MicroTiles digital canvas

· 50 million pixels of resolution

· 15 simultaneous HD video streams

· 476 square feet of Traxon Mesh

· 600 feet of A-Deco Pixel strings

· five d3 Media Servers