The Guitar Show at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is the world’s first guitar shaped hotel. Standing at about 400ft tall, the front facade of the hotel is both a media system and a dynamic sculpture. Lined with LED rods, it serves as a screen and stage to daily musical showcases. The shows are a testament to how music has been instrumental in defining Hard Rock hotels, restaurants and entertainment properties around the world. Float4 was brought on by DCL, a Boston-based leading fabricator of architectural specialties – including custom signage, rebranding, wayfinding, and themed entertainment – to produce and integrate generative and sound reactive content for the nightly shows on the hotel’s facade.
The Challenge
Due to the unusual make-up and shape of the building, the team had to develop a new way to design and choreograph the show onto the facade. Float4 had to take into consideration the technical infrastructure and direction of each V-Stick, as well as the infrastructure of the building itself. Each of the show elements – from the V-Sticks, to the 6 lasers and fireworks, to the music and audio system – would have to be perfectly synchronized for each show. Along with this, the team had to find a format that would allow them to make last minute changes to a show without waiting for content to render.
Furthermore, the content had to be both representative of the Hard Rock brand – to seamlessly situate itself within the brand’s legacy, lore and allure – and able to continuously evolve depending on the energy or the narrative the end-client wishes to convey.
Project Vision
The project vision was to give life to a monumental establishment through digital presence and creative solutions; to design, produce and deliver a show that elevated the Hard Rock brand narrative, while eliciting a positive emotional response from the guests. The Guitar Show is an opportunity for Hard Rock guests and fans to come together to watch a nightly celebration.
Joe Polilio
Joe Polilio
Joe Polilio
Design + Execution
The hotel was designed by Steve Peck of Klai Juba Wald Architecture. The digital media facade was managed, directed, engineered and installed by DCL (Design Communications Ltd.) Float4 was brought on by DCL to produce and integrate generative and sound reactive content for the nightly shows on the hotel’s facade.
Float4 built a 3D CAD model of the hotel to pixel map each individual V-Stick, including its position on the building, the direction it was facing, and its signal flow. 2 million pieces of data were converted into usable data strings so that the team could choreograph content that corresponded to the building’s existing technical infrastructure. Shows run from sundown to sunrise every night and all the show’s elements are managed on a single server from Realmotion’s Gold Series integrated with ISAAC, the scheduling and automation control platform by Smart Monkeys Inc.
Joe Polilio
Joe Polilio
Project Details
Design Team
Anastasia Kitsos, Alexandre Simionescu, Katie Wilson, Antoine Saint-Maur, Matt, Jean-Claude Macena
Collaborators
DCL, SACO Technologies, Realmotion, Smart Monkeys Inc.
Photo Credits
Float4
Open Date
October 2019