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Obscura Digital Makes Science Fiction Come To Life

A digital lab and agency committed to actualizing all your sci-fi fantasies.

"The world is our canvas" is one motto of tech lab and creative agency Obscura Digital. They’re keen to emphasize their merits—stating they work with some of the most powerful tools on the planet, create new software, hardware, and super solutions that no one has ever heard of. They also promise to make any dream project come to life, however preposterous it may be.

After looking at some of the astronomical projects they’ve executed, it’s clear that their work does do justice to what they promise. “When you experience an Obscura innovation, it’s magic,” they say on their website. They’re alluding to projects like their projection mapping performances on some of the most recognized landmarks in the world, an interactive billiard table that projects images in reaction to a players’ shots, or their work creating holographic projections for NASA—stuff right out of science fiction movies. You can check out all of their works online, plotted out on a convient Google map to see what’s nearest to you.

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This past March, the biggest project of their ten year career made people’s jaws drop. The Sydney Opera House in Australia was transformed into a giant multimedia installation for the grand finale concert of the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra. They gathered 101 musicians from 33 countries for the presentation, and Obscura’s projections were displayed both inside and outside the theater. The agency customized interfaces, control systems, and software ensuring that the reactive projection would have an immediate answer to each melodic nuance in real time. It went something like this:

They also did the projection mapping on the Guggenheim Museum in New York, for last year’s YouTube/Play Awards Show.

Obscura Digital also helped build an educational presentation for NASA by realizing rapper and actor Mos Def and astronaut Leland Melvin as holographic projections.

And finally here’s a look at Cuelight, a projection system that casts different backgrounds on a pool table, reacting to the movements of every shot. It was installed at the SoHo Esquire House in New York City and at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas.