Optoma powerfully expresses the impacts of climate change

The Nordic Museum in Sweden cooperated with Optoma to illustrate how the Arctic is being affected by global warming.

The Challenge

“In the middle of the polar star. Where the meridians radiate and the time zones cease. That’s where the Arctic begins, home to four million people. For thousands of years, the people here have lived with the ice.” – Nordic Museum

This spring, integrator Kreativ Teknik won a contract to provide a visual solution for a new exhibition, The Arctic – while the ice is melting, at the Nordic Museum.

The Nordic Museum’s grand hall would give way to the exhibition which deals with the Arctic area from a variety of perspectives, namely; the geographical area, the people who actually live there, how you live today and how you lived in the past, the animals, and then perhaps the most critical issue today, climate change and the polar melting – how do we adapt to it?

The central element invites visitors to hike through a mock-up of a giant iceberg with a deep crack running through the centre representing the rift between past and present. The centre piece was created in cooperation with the design-duo MUSEEA.

Upon entering the over 20 metres high magnificent hall, two 10,000 lumen laser ZU1050 projectors – powered by a pair of BrightSign players, illuminate the pair of iceberg facades with stylised moving images of cascading ice on each side of the cracks.

Continue the journey by entering the iceberg to discover multifaceted stories about the history, the future of the Arctic, and the people who call it their home. The stories told through a collection of contemporary films from the Arctic, are fed from a computer with nine outputs running Arkaos Mediamaster PRO to nine ZU500TST projectors.

Take a diversion into the crevice, where ice is projected from a Datatron Watchout to two ZU500TSTs onto the curved wall, giving the feeling of being in an igloo.

To complete the adventure and discovery of life in the Arctic, the pièce de résistance calls visitors to gaze up at the northern sky. Twelve ZU750 projectors point upwards onto the curved ceiling. Jesper Wachtmeister creates the projections, building primarily on Nordic Museum’s collection of contemporary photos and films, and featuring stunning photography of the aurora borealis – the ceiling allows gazers to take a seat and experience the changing world.