Idea Factory and Hippotizer V4 light up the 2015 Gwangju Universiade Opening Ceremony

On Friday 3rd July - A relatively small city in Asia, Gwangju prepared to reach out to the young people of the world. The Universiade is an international multi-sport event, organized for university athletes by the International University Sports Federation (FISU). The name is a combination of the words "University" and "Olympiad". The event is split into ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ events much like the Olympics.

The Gwangju Worldcup Stadium in Korea, hosted 12 days of competition, with approximately 13,000 athletes from 147 countries, who competed for 272 gold medals in 21 sports, at 38 venues across the city.

The three-hour opening show was titled “U Are Shining: Youth is the Light of the Future” and directed by Park Myung-sung, who has previously worked on “Aida” and “Mamma Mia!” among other hit musicals. The Opening Ceremony highlighted the city of Gwangju’s idealistic image – a city filled with light as its name says in Korean – into a musical featuring a mix of modern electronic dance music and Korea’s traditional sounds. Artists from Gwangju City Ballet and Gwangju City Traditional Music Orchestra helped give the Ceremony a local flavour. The concept of the 2015 Gwangju Universiade was ‘EPIC’. Standing for ‘Eco-friendliness, Peace, IT and Culture’. These four visions are the principal concepts of the Universiade. Idea Factory was called upon to bring this concept to life and help create a spectacle worthy of the occasion.

MJ from Idea Factory used 3 x Hippotizer Taiga’s and 1 x Hippotizer Boreal to bring the huge tower centrepiece and stadium floor to life, displaying images symbolising Korea’s traditions mixed with original content.

Green Hippo: MJ, can you tell us how you used Hippotizer Media Servers on this show?

MJ: Yes, I used geometry on viewports, Warp, DMX and CITP component for the show – Movie clip size is 3840 x 3840 px for the stadium ground and 2560 x 1440 px for the towers.

Green Hippo: MJ what was your biggest challenge when taking on this project?

MJ: Struggling with 22 Viewports and 22 Warps from each output for 22 projectors! The Hippotizer media servers has flexible usability and meant that I could do what I needed – no problem.

Green Hippo: How do you think the show went?

MJ:Hippotizer V4 gave the high quality projection mapping show that I was expecting without any problems. I was able to be proud to show Korea has great talent – sporting talent as well as creative 🙂

You can see some of the ceremony here: https://vimeo.com/132897732

Credits: Production company & Hippo programmer: MJ Lee, from Idea Factory.
The next summer Universiade is in 2017 and will be from August 19th to 30th, 2017, hosted in Taipei, China.