Inside the Illuminarium, the $30 million spectacle that’s like walking into a film
A $30 million spectacle is opening in Atlanta next month that proposes a new kind of post-pandemic experience. Blurring elements of film, immersive environments, and theatrical design, the space, called Illuminarium, hopes to bring visitors together indoors in a room that can be transformed through video projection, lidar-based interactive digital elements, sound, and special effects to replicate any place in the world—or beyond.
Created by Alan Greenberg, a private school entrepreneur and former publisher of Esquire Magazine; Jon Kamen, the founder of the documentary and filmmaking company Radical Media; and David Rockwell, the architect, theater designer, and founder of Rockwell Group, Illuminarium is attempting to be a space that is something of a cross between a museum, a movie theater, and virtual reality—with an emphasis on experiencing it together with other people.
Illuminarium’s Atlanta location is planned as its first, with a second now under construction in Las Vegas, another planned in Miami, and joint ventures being set up to expand the concept internationally.
The actual experience of visiting Illuminarium will involve a timed entrance into an 8,000-square-foot room where the walls and floor will be covered in the projected safari film. Broken down into distinct chapters, covering different parts of Africa, the film itself is nonlinear, and able to be entered at any point in its roughly 50-minute run time. Visitors can walk throughout the space or find a place to sit or perch. At their leisure, they can exit through the gift shop.
With haptic effects in the floors that will make visitors feel the rumble of a lion walking nearby and responsive elements in the bar space like a flock of birds that bursts from a tree when visitors approach, the emphasis is on immersion.
“You have a much bigger physical responsibility, because anybody in the room can be looking in any direction at any time. It’s a completely different discipline of filmmaking.”
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90644148/inside-the-illuminarium-the-30-million-spectacle-thats-like-walking-into-a-film?partner=rss&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
