The streets of Cincinnati awash with color for BLINK light festival

In October 2022 BLINK was back with their first event since 2019, using much of Cincinnati, OH and Covington, KY as a canvas. The four-day, 30 city block festival is the nation’s largest light, art and projection mapping experience. Barco projections turned the city’s landmark buildings into ‘a techno cityscape of the future’.

Barco’s partner PRG has served as BLINK’s preferred production solutions supplier since 2017. PRG provided this year’s enormous event with video, lighting, and audio support as well as a massive crew of designers, technicians, and labor to realize the organizers and artists vision.

Working with outdoor canvases

There are a number of technical challenges that need to be addressed and solved for an event like this. PRG’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Scott Inukai explains: “When you start taking things outside, that changes the equation for everything. Building structures inside, you don’t have to factor in wind, you don’t have to factor in ambient light—like the lamp pole that’s 50’ down the road shining a light on your wall.”

“Challenge number two is you’re projecting on the sides of buildings, so it’s not a flat projection surface. It’s kind of the ‘in’ thing now, so it’s obviously very popular and can be done, but it’s not a projection screen, so that has to be considered as well.”

PRG teamed up with its partners to deliver the appropriate technologies and custom solutions to best cover the building to the artist’s direction, as well as what would look best for the building being projected on.

Barco laser in the technology mix

Projectors included seventy-one Barco flagship line models bringing a mix of mapped videos that traced the buildings architectures and washed them with splashes of graphical content and color.

With dust filters, optimized thermal dynamics and a compact size, the UDX laser projectors are designed to provide the brightest images and highest performances even when facing the challenges of outdoor environments.

Bryan Besterfeldt, VP National Product, Video at PRG, confirms “the Barco projectors are reliable projectors going strong in live-critical situations and throughout the course of the outdoor event. And what’s more, the Barco projectors were easy to setup which helped us finish the installations in a very narrow time window.”

In addition, this years’ festival was an all-laser projection installation. In keeping with BLINK’s mission to reduce the event’s carbon footprint, PRG provided LED fixtures and laser projectors with lower power consumption. An initiative fully supported by the Barco team with our flagship line projectors’ rugged design and laser phosphor light source.

Cincy culture

An estimation of over 2,000,000 people attended the multiday experiential event that united many artists—from local to international—with local and international visitors alike. The Executive Director of BLINK, Justin Brookhart, was very pleased with these results, stating, “We couldn’t be more pleased with the output from PRG and the Barco projectors. What an incredible weekend for public art and community in the Cincinnati region. We want to thank the artists, partners, and sponsors who truly made it possible to have BLINK back at the quality and scale the region deserves.”