Famous Architecture Turns into Projection Screens for Christmas in Sydney

Technical Direction Company is bringing large-format video projection technology to two must-see events in Sydney this year.

In its sixth year, Lights of Christmas, presented by Payce, is a public celebration generously hosted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney at St Mary’s Cathedral and AGB Events, creating extraordinary experiences. Once again, TDC has used its expertise to turn the façade of St Mary’s Cathedral into a huge 250-foot backdrop of an imaginative representation of Christmas and what it means to Sydney. TDC created 17,640,000 pixel animated images using 264,000 lumens of projected light to illuminate the facade.

TDC has used its expertise to turn the façade of St Mary’s Cathedral into a huge 250-foot backdrop of an imaginative representation of Christmas and what it means to Sydney.

To manage the full HD content images, TDC’s hardware needs massive processing power – 2 terabytes of content management, 48 cores of processing and 144 gigabytes of RAM. TDC projection video designers created special code and electronics so that the entire system is ‘virtually wired’ and controllable using an iPad device.

“Remote monitoring is something TDC has been perfecting for a number of years,” says Michael Hassett, managing director at TDC. “It allows for rapid programming, fixes issues remotely in real-time, uses a CCTV camera on-site to see what’s happening and allows scheduling of different shows and operation of each day’s events.”

Event content, original content and production was handled by AGB Events. “The animations have three themes based around life and light,” says Anthony Bastic, director at AGB Events. “TDC is back this year with bigger and brighter projectors. Their expertise enables us to have unlimited creativity with our artwork.”

In addition, Merry Go Round returns this year to the landmark Commercial Traveler’s Association Building in Martin Place. Using video projection from TDC, the giant curved concrete façade takes shoppers and local workers on a journey. The building appears to spin and pop as the cast of dancing robots and singing mechanical animals swing into action, before the building packs itself up and blasts off into space as a flying saucer with Christmas lights. The building is the perfect canvas for the artistic work by Ample Projects and runs until Christmas Day 2015.

“As with all of our collaborations with TDC, we are very proud of this award-winning artistic and technical achievement,” says Nicholas Troy, creative director at Ample Projects. “This show presented new design challenges, and we are so proud of the result. We couldn’t have done it without our technical partners, TDC.”

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