Meet the company that brought Goddess Kali to New York's Empire State Building
From Spider-man to King Kong, New York City's iconic Empire State Building has served as the perfect vantage point for innumerable Hollywood films. But one filmmaker has turned the building from the subject of movies into a version of the silver screen itself. This August, Academy Award-winning director Louie Psihoyos turned the entire building into the world's largest tombstone, projecting giant visuals of some of the most endangered species on the planet, like manta rays and snow leopards.
The effect was achieved with the help of visual artist Travis Therlkel, who is also the chief creative office of Obscura Digital, a creative technology company that creates immersive visual experiences. Obscura used 40 projectors, stacked on each other on a nearby building to tell the world a story about endangered species.
A few days after the giant projection of animals, Goddess Kali took over New York’s Empire State Building as part of the artwork. Artist Android Jones designed the fierce portrait of Kali, who is known as the goddess of power, change and destruction to remind people that nature is in her fiercest form to fight the dangers of extinction and human dominance over nature.
Obscura's 20,000 lumen projectors, used for the light show with endangered species as well as the Kali projection, cost more than $1 million to do. But the Empire State Building isn't the only global landmark that it has transformed.
As part of the United Arab Emirates’ 40th anniversary celebrations in 2011, Obscura created a series of elaborate projections that illuminated two culturally significant landmarks: the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the same one that Prime Minister Modi just visited, and the historic Al Jahili Fort in the oasis city of Al Ain. As the video above shows, the combination of beautiful landmarks and creative artwork produces an effect that when done right can be stunning to witness.
