France - Since 2024, visitors to the Cité Immersive Viking in Rouen have been able to delve into the fascinating world of the Vikings. The multimedia exhibition retraces the Viking invasion of Normandy in the ninth and tenth centuries and brings the culture and history of the region to life in a multimedia and immersive way.
The organisers behind the exhibition have commissioned a specialist for the technical planning and implementation: the event technology service provider Novelty. Mathieu Cabanes was responsible for the lighting design of the various exhibition rooms. The French lighting designer originally comes from the world of opera, but has also made a name for himself with major corporate and sporting events. In the Cité Immersive exhibition, Cabanes relies on the versatile LED bars from the Cameo Pixbar G2 series and the RGBW PAR spots from the Q-SPOT series, among others.
With the Cité Immersive Viking exhibition, the organisers are pursuing a special kind of historical exploration: “My aim was to convey emotions to visitors through the world of the Vikings,” explains Cabanes. “Inspired by real stories and facts, we have created an evolving cycle in each room that reveals different moments in the life of a Viking.” With its numerous video walls, 360° video mapping, 3D sound design, historical reconstructions, and the use of evocative scents, the exhibition combines classic and modern techniques to bring the ways of the Viking to life.
“It was important to the client to create an exceptional visual experience for visitors,” adds Morgan Coeurdray from Novelty. “For this, we needed an aesthetic, reliable, precise, and high-quality lighting solution that also stayed within the budget.”
In the Cité Immersive Viking, every room is different and has its own dramatic composition and characteristics. No room makes this clear quite like Bifröst – a space-time corridor that takes visitors from the Viking age to the present day. Cabanes and set designer Sophie Liger worked with dichroic glass for this room. To further enhance the sparkling, iridescent effect of the glass, Cabanes placed the Pixbar SMD IP G2 IP65 SMD LED bars in a specific pattern on the ceiling for a dynamic and multicoloured visual effect.
In contrast to his work in theatre and opera, Cabanes was able to decide independently which lights he wanted to use for the exhibition. In addition to the Pixbar SMD IP G2, the Pixbar 400 IP G2 and various Q-SPOT LED PAR spots in different wattages and LED configurations were also used to show off Liger’s set elements to their best advantage.
Cabanes was particularly impressed by the Fresnel spots in the F series, which were used to precisely illuminate the longboat (drakkar) in the exhibition: “In addition to the different sizes (F1 to F4), I like the variety of LED modules and housing versions (T, D, FC, PO, IP, FC+). This means I can always find the right light for the application in question. At the same time, the devices can be operated quickly and intuitively. The zoom controls, shutters, and physical potentiometers on the devices remind me a lot of products that we regularly use on TV sets.”
Additionally, the lights had to be compact in order to be integrated as discreetly as possible into the exhibition rooms with their low ceilings. “The technology used forms the basis of the immersive experience but must not distort the creative and historical aspects of the exhibition,” explains Coeurdray. “Ideally, the technology isn’t even perceived as such by visitors.”
“Of course, the budget also played an important role,” adds Cabanes. “For me, the price-to-performance ratio of Cameo is almost perfect.”
