CASE STUDYVideo mapping
pioneers Glowing
Bulbs embrace
Disguise’sMapping Matter
solution

www.disguise.one

Summary
Since its inception in 1998, Budapest’s leading visual arts
studio, Glowing Bulbs, has been delivering groundbreaking
projects. Born from the city’s vibrant underground art scene,
the group’s ambitions often outreached the capabilities of thetechnology that was available to them - urging the team toimprovise. Initially working with still images and S8/16mm ﬁlm
projectors, the collective found clever hacks and tricks thatallowed them to deliver their innovative work, upgrading astechnologies became more aﬀordable, and their successbrought bigger budgets.
But still, their ambitions stretched beyond current capabilities,
and Glowing Bulbs found their own way of delivering projects
that ranged from underground raves to experimental art
installations. They were pioneers, using their own approaches
to image distortion technologies, long before mapping became
a commonly used tool.
Eventually, technology caught up with Glowing Bulbs’ boldvision, and the collective’s experimental tendencies saw them
testing out the practical applications of new mapping tools like
Disguise’s Mapping Matter solution. When Veszprém camecalling with an ambitious project that would celebrate their role
as a European Capital of Culture, Glowing Bulbs knew they had
the best way to deliver an entrancing show.

Image credits: Glowing Bulbs

The Challenge
Where many cities beneﬁt from large open spaces that canhost central events, Veszprém’s relatively small layout
presented a distinct challenge. The expected audience would
need to be scattered amongst a number of smaller stages in
diﬀerent areas of the city.
The team settled on ﬁve locations that would each hostdiﬀerent performances and feature diﬀerent stage designs, allrunning simultaneously.
“We decided on an open-air immersive experience for thespectators,” says Tamas Zador, founder member of Glowing
Bulbs and director of the Budapest studio. Incorporatingmusic, dance, live performance art and video projection, theexperience would see Zador’s team working to project stunningvisuals onto a broad range of structures across the city.
Delivering this ambitious programme represented a big
technical challenge that would include scanning most of thestreets of Veszprém’s centre while deploying more than sixty
projectors across the route.
“The surfaces were also diverse and challenging,” says Zador.
“A 1000-year-old cathedral, a 300 metre-long street with
sixteen diﬀerent facades, and a twenty-storey house from thesocialist era were just a few of the challenges we had to dealwith.”

Image credits: Glowing Bulbs

The Solution
The team set about preparing for the project, which would seethem create an hour-long video production to play out across asprawling canvas at 14x4k total resolution. Zador saw the work
as a great honor, and the fulﬁlment of a long-time dream, andso made the most of a ten-month pre-production period thatleft plenty of time for template setup, concept and mood
preparation, research and experimentation.
Nevertheless, the project’s sheer scale led the team to fully
rethink their workﬂow and operating standards.
Disguise’s workﬂow proved key, enabling the team to use
patches to adapt to last-minute changes, inserting them into
the show automatically with frame precision. “We saved tons oftime and sweat not having to re-render complete scenes,”
Zador adds. “As content creator and director, it was the mostimportant feature both before and during the event.”
Disguise Cloud’s Mapping Matter and its precise details also
helped the Glowing Bulbs team greatly reduce their lensing
inventory, enabling them to understand their exact needs.
“Having back-up lenses for sixty projectors would have madethe project we envisioned cost prohibitive,” says Zador. “Wewould have had to cut down on projection surfaces.”

Image credits: Glowing Bulbs

“Mapping Matter was a great help,
allowing us to be dynamic and work
closely together with theever-changing parameters of theevent. The ability to understandevery inch of the structures played akey role as the organisers changed
stages and moved locations.”
Tamas Zador
Founder of Glowing Bulbs
Director of the Budapest studioResults
Though Glowing Bulbs are no strangers to ambitious
approaches and big projects, they had known from the startthat Disguise’s tools would be the key to success for theEuropean Capital of Culture project in Veszprém. Streamlining
complex workﬂows and planning every aspect of the project
down to the smallest detail, Disguise simpliﬁed what could
have been an exhausting process.

560-80k

14k x 4k

1.5Km

locations for
performancesaudience
members

canvasof programmed
shows“The biggest success was that, despite the increasingly
intensive process, we were able to maintain the focus andquality of the production,” says Zador. “The projection itself
was a great success. The projector view export streamlined
setup, helping the team pre-map and pre-align all theprojectors before the servers were even in place.” This meantthat by the time the servers came online, all forty-four of thestaging areas were ready to go without the need for any
physical adjustments.
This is the reliability the team came to trust. With the minutiaeof setup made easy, there was more room to focus ondelivering the visuals that would blow audiences away.
For Zador, the project was an unqualiﬁed success. “We wereable to pull it oﬀ exactly as we intended to,” he says. “We hadno hiccups at all thanks to the rigorous planning, ourprofessional and dedicated crew and, of course, thehigh-quality AV gear we chose.”

Image credits: Glowing Bulbs

Disguise equipment used

4x4proMAPPING MATTERGX 2Designed for large video
surfaces, the 4x4pro is capable ofdriving up to 16 HD projectors or
LED processors from a single
server unit.

Eﬀortlessly plan and simulate
large scale video projection
layouts. Import high-resolution
Meshes & Textures to create
beautiful scenes without having
to know complex 3D softwares.

Built with the power to respond,
the GX 2 media server delivers
richer scenes at higher
resolutions, and smootherframe-rates than ever before.

Find out more

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In Partnership withFarkas Fülöp: General technical lead designer, pre production and template
designer, and on site technical production lead
Ferenc Sárkány: Projection technical manager
Viktor Drimmer: Lead Projectionist
Andor Zekany: System Engineer
Peter Perjesi, Tibor Fulemile, Majo Tamas: Project Manager
Libor Zsolt, Gwilym Huws, Marek Jankowski, Henrik Nagy: D3 operator
Zoltan Nagy, Peter Kaloz: Mbox operator
Gyorgy Karaﬀa, Laszlo Perjesi, Tamas Kovacs, Gabor Marton, Norbert
Kozma, Istvan Fazekas: Projector technician
Tams Dunajcsik, Marton Naszvadi: Network technician
Andras Lerner: ElectricianSoso, Andras Megyeri: Pani Technician
Balazs Varga: Lighting Designer‘Pite’: Staging Lead Engineer
Zsolt Szicso: Stage Manager
Brigitta Major: Assistant Stage Manager
Tamás Zádor: Content and Stage Design by Glowing Bulbs
Art Director and Production Manager
Márton Noll, Tamás Zádor: Stage DesignMarcell Andristyak, Istvan Rittgasszer, Zsolt Csajagi, Balazs Szőcs, EszterSzabó, Eszter Papp, Pablo Campos, Gábor Kitzinger, Fanni Bajer, Soma
Sárﬃ, Péter Reichardt, Tamás Zádor: Animation
Péter Zabó, Gábor Farkas Varga: Graphic Designer
Krisztina Heckler: Production Assistant
Attila Pacsay: Music and Sound Design
Projection Setup by VisualHumans
Projector Equipment provided by LANG
LED equipment provided by VEG
Staging and Scaﬀolding provided by VEG
Can Togay: Event Creative Director
Adorján Tóth: Event Lead

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