Viking / Video Installations

Viking is one of the world’s foremost river cruise lines, bringing modern, tasteful opulence to its passengers’ journey. Our mission for Viking was to develop highly polished, beautiful, and engaging visual experiences aboard their first ocean cruise ship that would embody the sophisticated spirit of the brand and entice passengers to board a totally ‘enhanced’ cruise.

Inspired by the incredible digital installation at LAX, our goal was for passengers to see how they can ‘abandon land’ without abandoning the best of what the most cultural of cities have to offer. By creating highly stylized and visually immersive projections for the ship, we wanted to infuse the journey with the wonder and beauty that all travel experiences should possess.

The ‘delivery’ for Viking swayed somewhat from the initial ‘ask’ – an interesting process of mixing and matching various technologies and art to see what would appear most striking. Ultimately, we created a series of magical moving photographs - 'cinemagraphs' - as well as gorgeous animated fractals. As we developed concepts for the onboard visual installations, we also experimented with new ways to contextualize the art. Namely, we built the entire ship atrium in Unreal Engine to experience the visuals in full-360 VR via the Oculus Rift. It was this exciting interplay of art and tech that led us to our final creations.

We have to say we’re pretty stoked with the whole process (a stay aboard a river cruise boat in Basel?! OK!) and the results (we love cinemagraphs) - and if you can afford a ticket aboard the Viking Star, be sure to check out our visual installation ;)

Featured here is a selection of the concept art we worked on for the cruise line’s digital visuals, along the fractals from the ship's huge-screen visual installation.