LM3X.com is an innovation-driven tech company focused on utilising projection mapping.

Projection mapping is gaining traction in the AV industry and is being applied to a whole range of surfaces and buildings. Sean Carroll writes about where this side of the industry is.

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope,” asks Princess Leia on a projected hologram in 1977 a galaxy far, far away.

While we’re nowhere near other galaxies, droids or lightsabres, the projection mapping side of the AV industry has grown into its own form of entertainment and art installation. While it’s not a hologram like in Star Wars, it’s using similar technology to project a moving image onto a solid surface.

In recent years, projection mapping companies have found ways to project colours, images, movies and more on the blank canvas that is our built environment. When the sun goes below the horizon, the façade of a building becomes a perfect wall for projections.

In September 2021, we saw how beautiful this technology can be at Art Month Sydney, a festival that saw around 157 events in the city, welcoming 15,000-plus visitors. Many of the events featured projection mapping designed by Be Productions using Epson projectors.

It created a platform for a new generation of contemporary artists to be noticed and to create connections with established artists.

The Art Month Sydney is one of the latest in a long line of events that make use of projection mapping technology.

White Night, an annual event hosted around Australia, started off in St Petersburg, Russia and has made its way around the world. One of the best parts of the White Night festival is when cities close off their streets, welcome foot traffic and let people walk past buildings filled with projection-mapped artwork.

LM3X is a European-based projection mapping hardware and software manufacturer. Most of the company’s work is in these community-driven, city installations.

“The most common use cases in our business are seasonal illumination in a number of cities,” LM3X co-founder and chief executive Lukas Brus says.

He adds that projection mapping wasn’t really hit directly by the pandemic, but with the cancellation or postponement of events across the world, this was where it took a hit.

“Interest, worldwide, is growing and we’re getting a lot of people inquiring about our services for artists, outdoor advertisements and more,” he says.

“It’s great that people are exploring projection mapping and learning about the experiences that we can offer. Projection mapping is adding to our museums, restaurants, public squares or any places that basically sell amazing experiences.”

According to the Projection Mapping Market Size and Forecast 2028 report, the projection mapping market was valued at US$1.82bn in 2019 and is projected to reach US$5.67bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 18.2% from 2020 to 2027.

“Rising investment in product advertising and increasing acceptance of projection mapping in media events worldwide are the major driving factors for the market’s growth,” the report finds.

“The demand for projection mapping is growing. Over the past three years, both the number of projects and the revenue they have generated have grown, driven by the need of a broad range of organisations to respond to the growing sophistication of increasingly blasé, tech-saturated consumers.”

At the moment, projection mapping is still a very young side of illumination, and it can be a tricky process to streamline the entire project. Lukas says that LM3X is developing a plug-and-play solution to make it easier for people to adopt the technology.

“We are building and developing software which is included in our projectors. It’s basically an object scanner and after scanning its surface, it gathers all the data and gives the user a simple canvas with all the options to install the artwork,” he explains.

“So, we are really simplifying the projection mapping process. And we are vertically integrating the whole workflow of projection mapping into a single professional product.”

As the world comes out of the pandemic and into a new, socially distanced world, projection mapping is an excellent way to improve upon the experience at the events that people are allowed to host.

Lukas adds that yes, it was a difficult time for the entire AV industry and projection mapping wasn’t exempt, but coming out of it, there are plenty of opportunities out there.

“At LM3X, we’re really putting a lot of focus on the product that we develop. We want to have more artistic projection mapping outdoors, like in combination with murals and really beautiful projections,” he says.

When asked what the future could hold for the industry, Lukas acknowledged that several companies are looking into interactivity with the projections. But even with the AV world moving into interactivity, he says there sometimes needs to be a moment where we can just sit back and enjoy the show.

“Projection mapping is really a simple, beautiful light installations and they don’t require much more magic. They are already magical enough.”