5D Experience: Travel into another dimension

28 January 2015 - 09:54 By Rea Khoabane
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DRINK IT IN: Conceptual artist Don Searll has created a '5D' experience for Redds cider. It combines 3D animation, water spray, scent and moveable chairs.
DRINK IT IN: Conceptual artist Don Searll has created a '5D' experience for Redds cider. It combines 3D animation, water spray, scent and moveable chairs.
Image: MOELETSI MABE

Hold on to your seat because it's a thrill ride, artist Don Searll created the first South African 5D experience.

As part of a campaign for South African Breweries' Redds cider, he has fitted a shipping container with hi-tech cameras that project 3D animation on screens inside the structure .

The experience is described as 5D because not only does each viewer's seat move in surprising ways, but vibration, scent and a light water spray increase the spectator's physical interaction with the 3D visuals.

In Searll's structure, the viewer is given the sense of being inside a bottle of Redds cider.

Vibrations, bubbles, foam and smell hit you from all sides while the images on screen provide a narrative for the effects.

The chair vibrates as cider is poured into a glass, and bubbles and foam come out of the screen.

When ice cubes are added to a glass of cider, air-conditioners are pushed to their chilly maximum into the container, and the smell of apple cider is pumped into the air.

Searll has also conceptualised 3D campaigns for Telkom, BMW, Coca-Cola and the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

His aim is to change the way brands interact with consumers and make the interaction both more technical and more artistic.

Said Searll: ''Technology has enabled people to tell stories and convey messages using all sorts of mediums."

But matching the technology to the message is more difficult. If it is done right, it can be a powerful and entertaining tool.

Said Searll: ''Visual literacy is universal.

"And people are delighted when all their senses are stimulated."

The Redds 5D experience will travel to Botswana, Tanzania and Zimbabwe before returning to Johannesburg. SAB will release information about where to experience the show once the container returns

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