Immersive, a global design and storytelling studio, has unveiled the innovation-driven process and global collaborations behind the extraordinary experience that is Alif - The Mobility Pavilion.
A three-year project saw Immersive realise and create visual and interactive content for the largest installations in Act 2 and all creative content in Act 3 of the Mobility Pavilion’s three-act experience.
Alif - The Mobility Pavilion, designed by Foster & Partners, tells the story of the past, present and future of human mobility. Working in close collaboration with EXPO, Emaar, MET Studio, ALEC Fitout, and WETA Workshop, Immersive were behind the realisation of all major visual and narrative-driven installations in both Act 2: Mobility in the Present Day and Act 3: The Future of Mobility.
Immersive was chosen for this ambitious project for their proven ability to create immersive narratives for major venues and complex spaces. Their vast experience in visual art, creative technology, spatial storytelling, lighting, narrative pacing, and high-end animation uniquely positioned them to deliver these experiences.
Immersive’s previous projects include work on the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies, FIFA World Cup 2014, Word Expo 2015, and the first-ever live holographic car race for BMW, as well as creating multiple large-scale audio-visual installations for The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.
Immersive joined the Mobility Pavilion project team in 2018, having previously worked with Foster + Partners to design the Universal Sphere with Steven Spielberg for Comcast.
Collaboration is key when delivering creative projects on this scale and Immersive is known for assembling and directing world-class teams to deliver world-first projects. For the unique challenges of the Mobility Pavilion, Immersive brought on board specialist partners including Jamais Cascio, the renowned Futurist from the Institute for the Future, CGI and mixed reality experts Synticate, and renowned production company Partizan.
In Act 2: Mobility in the Present Day, Immersive were tasked with bringing to life the incredible story of global mobility in the present day. Projected onto a massive 11-metre diameter globe, dynamic, evolving visuals track the real-life voyages of people, services and products around the world.
Opposite, a huge, deconstructed screen tells the story of digital connectivity across a total of 150 screens, centred around a 6-metre holographic screen, from which the others appear to explode. This media featured an enormous canvas of 227.7 million pixels.
To deliver this installation, Immersive created a custom Giga-Pixel AI Workflow to allow a global team to work remotely on huge media files. In Act 2, Immersive also developed an interactive installation using state-of-the-art facial recognition technology that allows visitors to see themselves as astronauts in space, housed in a large-scale sculptural piece created by Weta Workshop.
In Act 3: Mobility in the Future, Immersive were tasked with imagining how future cities might look, feel and work. The narrative plays out across four screens including an enormous 23-metre panorama and two convex circular mirror surfaces. Two additional three-storey-high vertical screens at the beginning and end set the scene.
Mobility in the Future was a world-building exercise in which every technological detail combined to form an ambitious vision of the future. To create visually stunning, hyper realistic content, Immersive integrated ultra-high-resolution animation and VFX techniques with carefully choreographed footage from multiple live shoots in Dubai and London.
Due to Covid, Immersive delivered much of the final phases of the project remotely from the world including Immersive’s teams in London, Shanghai, Toronto and Cape Town. Remote delivery of ultra-large format installations poses unique challenges, in response to which the studio built in new innovations originally used for construction, AI data processing and gaming into their workflows.
The ability to prototype the complex installation designs was crucial to the success of the project. To manage stakeholders across the globe, Immersive developed a bespoke VR platform that allowed partners to enter the environment itself and test out iterative content. This also allowed Immersive to feed in content and finetune colour-grading and quality control simultaneously from different locations around the globe.
Immersive Founder and CEO John Munro said: “It’s been three years in the making, but we're very excited to finally be able to show how we've transformed the Mobility Pavilion into a world of vivid imagination and immersive storytelling.”
“Delivering these world-first experiences has been an epic challenge but this was the perfect project for Immersive’s unique skillset; working alongside a range of brilliant partners, combining unique creativity and storytelling talent with cutting edge technology, tailoring an experience to a space, and having a global team do it all remotely.
“It’s an immensely proud achievement and we can’t wait for the world to enjoy it. We think this teamwork is a reflection of the spirit of the UAE, with people from all nationalities working together to achieve a singular dream,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service