Festival of Lights

It is when, after sunset, striking landmarks and well-known buildings in the capital are illuminated by artistic projections, and enthusiastic visitors move from one work of art to another through the streets of Berlin, that you know that the impressive “Festival of Lights” is taking place again. This year, about 100 locations were highlighted. For the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the motto was “Lights of Freedom”. The event was held from the 11th till 20th of October, for the 15th time, and it was once again a great success! Around three million people came to Berlin to marvel at the spectacular open-air gallery.

PRG was one of the technology partners and was commissioned to install media and projection technology at eight different locations, including the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin TV Tower. Over 40 projectors from PRG were in action. Panasonic DLP laser projectors PT-RZ31 K were installed at the Brandenburg Gate. These high-performance projectors have a brightness of 30k ANSI lumens. In the case of the Berlin television tower, the projection was realised using portrait mode projectors in order to be able to show the video mapping over the tower’s total height of 368 metres. The buildings and institutions were covered with projections daily from 7 pm to 0 am.

Marin Petkov, Visual Artist & Visual Effects Supervisor of the Festival of Lights:
“Thanks to these high-performance projectors, the show at the Brandenburg Gate was spectacular. They were also in use at the Berlin TV Tower at Alexanderplatz – and the visuals were simply awesome!“

It took one week to set it all up with a crew of eight people. Due to the darkness required, the video mapping was set up and programmed in the evening and at night. In addition to the Berlin TV Tower and the Brandenburg Gate, the PRG team installed video technology at the James-Simon-Gallery, the Ministry of Finance, the Museum of Natural History, the Humboldt Forum, the Shopping-Center Jahndorf and the Marstall building. PRG also partly installed the audio technology.

PRG Account Manager Gerd Helinski and his team had already provided the customer with detailed advice and a technical detailed planning in advance. Birgit Zander, initiator of the “Festival of Lights”, was very satisfied with the smooth cooperation: “For the video projections and the shows it was important to consider that every building, every facade, every stone, every angle is different. And having a competent partner with whom you can plan things, who can advise you and make suggestions is extremely important for us – Gerd Helinski and his team really gave us excellent advice in this regard.”

PRG Services delivered:

• Video (Projection Mapping)
• Media Servers
• Audio