Innovative art is not necessarily what you would expect to see in Rüdesheim (Germany), but thanks to Helmut M. Bien, this was quite different during the three days around the October 3, 2009, Germany’s Unification day: Bien, otherwise known as the art director of the Frankfurt Luminale, was able to motivate the Joint Board for the Upper Middle Rhine Valley as well as various communities and many artists in the area.

All around the UNESCO World Heritage Site Upper Middle Rhine Valley, the Rheinpartie… to move on to pastures new festival of projection art and media was born. 12 projectors from Christie formed also part of this project.

"The total darkness here in the area along the Rhine Valley, is ideal for impressive projections," Bien explains the choice of locations selected for the "rheinpartie".

It was, however, not completely dark, since high up at the top station of the Rüdesheim aerial cableway bright light enclosed the 38 meter high statue of the Germania watching from up there over the life down to the Rhine and which was built in 1883 as a monument celebrating the foundation of the German Reich. Once standing in front of the enormous sculpture, the bright light turns out to be a precise projection: It is the first work of British artist Ross Ashton in Germany, who came over - just for this occasion - from the Pittsburgh Festival of Light, which gathered worldwide interest in the topic of light and projection in advance of the G20 summit. And his next projects are quite impressive, too, as he explains: "We are talking of a cathedral in London, where we will work with eight projectors. Then next project will then be at St. Andrews, where we will have light plays on three different buildings, before we turn to the Cambridge University, where we will be handling five buildings."

The "rheinpartie", nevertheless, was something completely new to Ross Ashton, as he explains: "The whole project is something new for the simple reason that I have never before worked in Germany. Additionally, this is the first monument I am projecting onto. Normally my acts involve buildings, quite often museums or whatever else, but this clearly is somewhat different since it has a completely different shape."

Ashton turned the heroic national German symbol of Germania into a living European monument, for example, by projecting the flags and symbols of all European member states onto the surface. Additionally he also projected a waterfall onto the nocturnal monument which "represented the unity of all European rivers", as he explained.

Ashton's Germania act involved four Christie Roadster S+20K projectors from the inventory of E/T/C, who also provided Onlyview, their in-house media control unit to the Rhine, a control developed specifically for large multimedia productions. Ashton was supported in his work at the Rhine by E/T/C programmer Richard Porter and logistics manager Paul Highfield. The Brits arrived three days prior to the event to adjust all devices on the complex monument, which they achieved perfectly, creating one of the highlights of the rheinpartie.

Another absolute highlight, and the only event for which visitors had to pay admission, was the projection inside the Rheinfels castle ruin high above the Rhine on the other side of the river. In this case, visitors didn’t have an idea of what to expect, since the act was set up in the ruin's inner courtyard, completely invisible to the outside. This, however, resulted in even more of a surprise once one stepped through the courtyard gate: Eight Christie projectors plus a Grass Valley Turbo iDDR player as source and Pandora's Box as control unit were used at the castle.

Five of the eight projectors were operating synchronously inside the castle, specifically two Roadster HD18K, two Roadster S+16K and one Christie LX1500. The projectors were placed in four rain-protected towers in the castle yard that were specifically built for them, and their projections covered the whole enormous and rounded surface of the castle. In this setup, the two brightest projectors, two Roadster HD18K with 18,000 ANSI lumens each, projected upright in portrait mode to show a total picture of 25 meters width. In the entrance to the inner courtyard, three Christie LX650s, each equipped with a player, were responsible for showing images on the walls of the castle.

Responsible for the content, here, was Skertzò, the French super stars among the video artists, who - just like E/T/C - have already created installations all over the world. Their latest project was a production on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. With the Rheinpartie project they also celebrated their German premiere, providing all the content which they painstakingly created prior to the event. For this purpose, they were on-site with camera and laser pointer already weeks ahead of the production, because the more closely the projector location matches the camera location, the more natural the final projection would be, of course.

Part of the calculations also was the determination of the respective projection distances. Responsible for the technology were the Schwetzingen-based video specialists of rent4event under the direction of managing director Martin Kolb. His team agreed in advance with Skertzò on projectors, resolutions and light output. Kolb realized all of the fine tuning together with his team in two setup days and nights onsite.

In Skertzò's work, each window played its role when the whole castle was turned into a giant gingerbread house by surrounding each and every window with icing. Or, in another scene, courtly life was projected onto the black window holes of the ruin and the castle became alive. A virtual fire was spreading, also quite realistically implemented acoustically by the sophisticated sound system - while in yet another scene the whole castle appeared to be a huge house of cards, until the giant coloured playing cards collapse into a pile. Then again spectators were able to follow farmers dragging their cart alongside the house and craftsmen doing their work – all of them products of Skertzò's imagination.

To adjust the projectors, the rent4event team and Skertzò were using stills on the dark nocturnal castle yard, but once the pictures started to move and the corresponding sound system was activated, the spectators quite literally broke out in cheers.

"It was a dreamlike romantic full moon night at the Rhine which immersed this cultural landscape in a new light," Art Director Helmut M. Bien raved when everything was over. Bien shared his experience with a total of 30,000 visitors, including a few nail-biters, such as when there were two short power outages at the Loreley and at one projection at the Hilchenhaus, but there were no problems, neither at the Germania nor inside the castle, as Bien explained: "The Christie projectors did their work without any complaints, and the feedback was great. A lot of people could not pull themselves away from the work of Skertzò. They staid for three runs and some even returned the next day. Quite obviously, the Son et Lumière tradition from France has now made its way all the way to the Rhine. We are already looking forward to 3rd October 2010."