Barco brings magic to science at 'Lumière Lumières' exhibition in Paris, France
For the “Lumière Lumières” (Light,Lights) exhibition at the Palais de la Découverte, Barco partnered with Fogscreen, Alterface and Electronic Shadow to turn the complexity of light in its many aspects into an exciting interactive experience. The exhibition, set up in the World Year of Physics 2005, is expected to attract more than 700,000 visitors by the end of August this year. Barco highlights include the enchanting virtual rainbow of colors upon entering and the “Panorama of the Waves”, where visitors interact with the spectrum of electronic radiations to discover the true origins of light and color.
For the realization of the virtual rainbow visitors can walk through, Fogscreen provided the damp producing engine that creates the fog to project upon. A high brightness Barco RLM G5 3 chip DLP projector projects the enchanting shades of color forming the magnificent rainbow.Brigitte Zana, director for development and networks at Palais de la Découverte: “We ordered a survey and assessment about the impact of the exhibition and each of its elements. In the report, the evaluators noticed that the entrance of the exhibition, i.e. the FogScreen, is a very strong attractive pole. It effectively persuades the visitors to enter the exhibition. Children and teenagers go again and again through the light beam. They take pictures of themselves. They touch the screen as if it was a waterfall, sometimes they even open their mouth to swallow! Some of them said: “light that goes outside gives desire to go inside!”
Brigitte Zana continues: “When Barco introduced the virtual rainbow, comprising the FogScreen system and their high-end projection, our whole team was immediately charmed by the technology. After a test in March 2005, we decided to integrate the Fogscreen at the entrance of the exhibition, as a very important and attractive element for our exhibit.”
Another challenge for the exhibitors was the explanation of wavelength. To emotionally involve the audience with this subject, visitors can link objects from everyday life (AM-radio, FM radio, microwave oven, radar, light bulb, etc) to the various types of radiation: radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, visible color spectrum, ultra-violet waves, X-rays and gamma rays. Impressive visualization on a panoramic curved screen was made possible through Barco’s professional SIM 5plus projector, combined with the interactive technologies from Alterface and artistic inputs from Electronic Shadow.
The “light” exhibition (exposition Lumière Lumières) at the Palais de la Découverte was opened on 10 October 2005 for the science fest in France and was supposed to close on 6 March 2006. But because of the success the exhibition will be extended to the end of August. In February, already 407,000 visitors discovered the FogScreen, with an expected total number of 700,000 by the end of August.
About Barco
Barco, an international company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company (Euronext: BAR; Reuters: BARBt.BR; Bloomberg: BAR BB).
© Copyright 2006 by Barco - May be reproduced by professional press only
