The exterior of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla., serves as a screen and stage to orchestrated outdoor music and live shows, displaying the light-emitting diode (LED) lights built into all sides of the structure.
By Jacqueline Geday and Jonathan Labbee
The façade of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla., the world’s first guitar-shaped hotel, is both a media system and a dynamic sculpture. Each evening, the hotel becomes a temporary light installation with interactive choreography set to music. The exterior of the building serves as a screen and stage to orchestrated outdoor music and live shows, displaying the light-emitting diode (LED) lights built into all sides of the structure. The lights are programmed to change colour and intensity with every song. Six high-powered beams of light accentuate the production by projecting nearly 6096 m (20,000 ft) into the sky, mimicking the strings of an imaginary guitar neck. These spectacular shows are a testament to how music has been instrumental in defining Hard Rock hotels, restaurants, and entertainment properties around the world.
Team work makes the dream work
Four major companies across North America collaborated to illuminate the 122-m (400-ft) tall hotel. The media aspect of the project was managed, directed, and installed by DCL (Design Communications Ltd.), a Boston, Mass.-based fabricator of architectural elements and environmental graphics. The company also hired three Montreal-based firms to complete the project: SACO Technologies, a solid-state LED technology developer, to design and manufacture lighting fixtures that enhance the nighttime appearance of the hotel; Float4, a multidisciplinary immersive design studio, to create, produce, and integrate the content for the musical shows; and RealMotion, a company that specializes in developing tools for digital experience, whose media server and software program was used to integrate the choreographed content.
