The Gold Room
The Gold Room is an interactive installation commissioned by Facebook to give guests an opportunity to share a unique moment during the olympic games with friends and family. The light and sound piece was concepted by Black Egg for the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro 2016 as a futuristic chamber inspired by movement, Brazilian design, geometry and sports.
Visitors are invited to enter a dimension that is is uncommon to them both in terms of aesthetic and experience. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick and films like the Matrix and Inception, the idea is to give guests a moment in which they enter a dream-like state filled with different tones of colors, lights, speed and sound.
Gold Room is a 12’ x 12’ enclosed digital installation designed to surprise and delight users with innovative light and sound design combined with bullet-time photography, an innovative 360-degree style still image capture. Participants enter the futuristic chamber and experience 45-second entertaining audio-visual show. Within the 60 seconds, the 360-degree camera system will take 3 image captures. Every 15 seconds, light and sound cues will alert the participant to freeze while each of the 24 cameras simultaneously capture an image of the person. When the experience is over, the interior will return to “sleep” mode and the person will exit the structure. The 24 still images will be stitched together into a movie file, and the visitor will have the option to share the movie file via email or on Facebook.
As we started to think about animation imagery and themes, we worked from three distinct inspiration points, BRAZIL/RIO, MOVEMENT and SPORTS. For Brazilian-themed inspiration, we looked at the vibrant colors found throughout Brazilian culture, patterns found in the sidewalks of Rio, the natural landscape and eye-catching architecture. Inspired by geometric abstract art and optical illusions we wish to use systematic and precise manipulation of shapes and colors in order to achieve illusions of perception. Using LED lights we will develop complex and optical spaces through the illusory manipulation of simple repetitive forms, such as parallel lines, checkerboard patterns, and concentric circles. Through these shapes, we will create the illusion of movement, preventing the viewer’s eye from resting long enough on any one part of the surface to be able to interpret it as a still image.
This project was commissioned by Facebook through Civic Entertainment Group.
Concept, Design, Architecture, Fabrication, Production, Software: Black Egg
Lighting Design & Animation: PlayMID
Photography Rig & Camera Software: Eric Pare Studio