Shoppers in New York City will have an electrifying experience when they visit Madison Avenue this 2012 holiday season. In the tradition of legendary New York Holiday retail campaigns, Barneys New York, in collaboration with The Walt Disney Company and Christie®, hosts an Electric Holiday.
“Electric Holiday” is a multimedia presentation highlighted by a digitally-animated, moving art short featuring Disney characters, as they strut the runway in original designer clothes.
The short is being displayed across a digital canvas of 425 Christie MicroTiles®, spanning eight windows of Barney’s New York store. The MicroTiles are installed in a variety of configurations, in landscape and portrait orientation, representing one of the most complex combinations of shapes, resolution, size and depth of field, ever used with Christie MicroTiles.
Right technology at the right place
The short is being displayed across a digital canvas of 425 Christie MicroTiles, spanning eight windows of Barney’s New York store. The MicroTiles are placed in a variety of configurations, in landscape and portrait orientation, representing one of the most complex combinations of shapes, resolution, size and depth of field, ever used with Christie MicroTiles. Christie’s Managed Services team has long history of collaboration with Disney and provided technical consultation at every stage of the installation, from concept finalization, to pre-staging, to on-site set-up, expanding on its long history of collaboration with Disney.
The 425 Christie MicroTiles in the Electric Holiday display generate the equivalent of a
1,041 sq ft image spread across 2,275 sq ft of building.
Why Disney chose Christie MicroTiles
The shallow depth of the Barneys’ display windows presented an especially daunting challenge, eliminating technology that required substantial space. Flat panels were considered, but their thick bezels significantly detracted from the display, which needed to appear nearly seamless.
Christie MicroTiles were the answer. They are lightweight and shallow rear-projection modules approximately 16” by 12”, less than a foot deep and a perfect fit in the store windows. More importantly, Christie MicroTiles have a nearly invisible 1mm gap between the tiles for seamless images and they can be scaled to any size, shape and orientation, forming a digital canvas of the highest brightness and resolution. With a viewing angle of 180 degrees, every view from the street offers “the best seat in the house”, regardless of where one is standing.
“Disney and Barneys wanted to create a visually stunning window display unlike any other and the Christie MicroTiles – with their high resolution, shallow depth, virtually seamless canvas and true-to-life image quality - made that possible. Utilizing 565 square feet of MicroTiles and 50 million pixels we are able to create a brilliant light and video show that will light up Madison Ave throughout the holidays.”
- Lylle Breier, SVP World Wide Special Events, Disney