Spectacular visuals created by projection-mapping expert Maxin10sity shined brightly at the recent Petra Light Festival, the first-ever multimedia show at the ancient sandstone ruins of Petra in southern Jordan.
Once the capital of the Nabataeans, a Bedouin people of classical antiquity, and nicknamed ‘Rose City’ (a reference to the pinkish color of the rock from which it’s carved), Petra was rediscovered in the 19th century and later declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city is now regarded (alongside other spectacular structures such as the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu and the Colosseum in Rome) as one of the ‘New Seven Wonders of the World’.
Combining projection art, music and narrative storytelling to bring the theme of the festival—the ‘Rebirth’ of the Nabataean civilization—to life, Petra Light Festival 2023 marked the first time that local authorities had allowed the millennia-old city to be used as the canvas for a multimedia show. The festival ran from April 23-May 3, with Maxin10sity’s artwork, Re-Vision, as the stand-out event—the show warping, mutating, and de and re-constructing the face of Petra’s iconic ‘Treasury’ (Al-Khazneh) temple in a manner that would render the city unrecognizable to its ancient occupants.
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Festival organizers, represented by Jordanian artist Andrei Snobar (Andrei Visuals), first contacted Maxin10sity directly at the beginning of 2023 after seeing the company’s projection content deployed to great effect on other projects, including historic buildings such as the Bolshoi Theatre, the Brandenburg Gate, Seattle’s iconic space needle and, in the Middle East, the Jerusalem Light Festival and Al Wasl Plaza in Dubai. “Having seen and liked our previous projects, the organisers considered us one of their first choices from the outset,” recalled Maxin10sity managing director Tamás Vaspöri, “which was a huge vote of confidence in our ability to deliver for a landmark as important as Petra.”
“I was thrilled when they called me about the project,” Vaspöri added. “Of course, for whatever reason some projects do not happen in the end—so I was a bit nervous, given the profile of the project and how many stakeholders were involved. But once we'd signed the contract and we found ourselves standing in front of the Treasury, all I could feel was happiness and pride.”
