One of the first Oscars for the Country came to A.R Rahman, and it was more than welcomed by the people of India, more ironically his millions of fans and followers in India did not get a chance to see his masterpiece concert “Jai Ho : The Journey Home World tour” which was on in the US, until there was a problem when a part of the set collapsed damaging the kit. But the question to ask is this, what set was broken and could not be repaired to such an extent that the show was completely put off until the rig is fixed ? Well its the awesome new world of projection mapping.

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Projection mapping is the latest and newest shiny technology to hit the floors of the concert scene world wide and Rahman being the tech savvy person that he is quickly embedded this new technology into his show. Well todays post helps look at projection mapping and some examples (yes yummy videos included).

Projection Mapping is actually a very old technique in which a shape is projected on a plane surface making it simpler to show complex shapes on a plane, globes were the first to make use of this technology. These days Projection mapping is making sure that using projectors various shapes are actually etched on buildings and other surfaces making them a bit alive. Now, it would not be very convincing if I don’t add a video here to show you what you are trying to imagine.

Lighting designer Peter Morse walks us through his process and implementation of his lighting for the AR Rahman The Journey Home World Tour.  This includes a look at his rig, provided by Epic Production Technologies, with gear from Philips Vari-Lite and Philips Color Kinetics.

In fact with Augmented Reality, this could be very soon be a very good technology to look up to in the future. Here are more examples of how this might make concerts really interesting pretty soon.

1. 3D Projection Mapping

2. Battle of Branchage – Architectural Projection Mapping

3. AC-DC vs Iron Maiden projection on Rochester Castle

4. Projection on Buildings

5. BMW 3D Projection Mapping Singapore

Ruchit Desai another Rahman fan and Blogger describes the feeling in the audience as part of watching this technology in action and you can read it here. While reading I did feel like watching the golden gates opening and “Yeh Jo Desh hai mera … ” playing, oh well until Rahman brings the Journey Back Home, back home, we can only see these videos to pacify ourselves.