Maxin10sity has supplied festivalgoers at Schlosslichtspiele Karlsruhe 2025, the 11th edition of the German light festival, with a volumetrically projected show that 'drew' with light in air, enabling attendees to be immersed in the projected image, rather than being passive observers.
Commissioned especially for Schlosslichtspiele Karlsruhe, Stellar Sanctuary reimagined the language of projection by moving beyond surfaces into space itself.
The ten-minute work used a pioneering volumetric projection technique to transform Karlsruhe’s Evangelische Stadtkirche (Evangelical City Church) into a walk-in AV experience: Instead of mapping an architectural façade, Maxin10sity generated geometric light forms, rendered by three Panasonic PT-RZ21K laser projectors, onto a carefully tuned haze field, choreographed to an original 7.2 surround score created by Maxin10sity and delivered via a d&b Soundscape immersive audio system.
After a decade of celebrated façade mappings at Karlsruhe Palace, Maxin10sity was asked by the festival to propose a new direction for 2025, including work away from the palace that could take in the wider city of Karlsruhe. The brief called for an evocative, audience-friendly evening experience inside the Stadtkirche, with minimal disruption to daytime church life and strict protection of the church’s heritage assets (including its antique Steinmeyer pipe organ). It had to be free to access, logistically simple to install and operate, and run nightly on an automated loop across the festival period (14th August–14th September).
By realising volumetric projection with conventional projectors rather than lasers or moving-light arrays, Stellar Sanctuary – the first large-scale example of this kind of show – offered the flexibility of projection mapping but with the spatial presence typically associated with lasers, albeit without the expense or safety considerations of a typical laser deployment. “With Stellar Sanctuary we wanted audiences to stand inside the image and interact with it, not just stand in front of it,” explains Tamás Vaspöri, managing director of Maxin10sity. “The real elegance of the show is in its economy: just three projectors, a haze field and a compact surround sound system, which also means a fraction of the power, logistics and crewing requirements needed for an equivalent façade-scale projection-mapped experience.”
images: Maxin10sity