Light up the Dark

Overview:

Light Up The Dark is a public activation hosted by the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, running December 27 to 29. The event transforms the museum’s exterior into a large-scale projection canvas, showcasing student artwork through immersive video mapping. Quest AV provided the full technical scope, delivering three blended HD projectors for projection mapping across the building’s facade.

Challenge:

Projection mapping onto a non-rectangular building exterior is technically demanding under any conditions. Doing it over three consecutive nights in late December adds layers: cold weather threatens sensitive equipment, holiday labor rates compress the budget, and load-in windows are subject to winter weather. Every decision had to balance precision with practicality.

Solution:

Thorough pre-production removed as many variables as possible before the team arrived on site. The building was measured and digitally mapped in advance using Resolume, so that on-site work was focused on final blending rather than starting from scratch. Equipment protection and temperature control were planned ahead of time, not figured out in the field.

Details about the project:

Projection mapping looks straightforward from the outside. In practice, it requires meticulous pre-programming. Our team took detailed measurements of the building to build a precise digital map in Resolume, sectioning out the surface so each projector’s coverage area was defined before load-in. On site, the work shifted to final blending and fine-tuning the seams between projectors. Because the building’s shape is irregular, getting the geometry right in pre-production was what made the on-site process clean.

Running projectors outdoors overnight in late December means cold is a real operational risk. Rather than leaving equipment exposed, we rented three vans, housing one projector in each, and used external oil-based heaters to regulate the temperature overnight. The projectors stayed protected and operational across all three nights without issue.

Working with a nonprofit client during the holiday period required careful budget management. With labor rates elevated over Christmas and weather adding uncertainty to load-in, we focused on efficiency at every stage: precise pre-production to minimize on-site hours, and solutions like the van housing that protected equipment without requiring expensive alternatives. The work stayed within budget without cutting corners on execution.

Quote from Quest AV:

“Light Up The Dark is exactly the kind of project we love. The brief was clear, the constraints were real, and the result spoke for itself. Seeing student artwork projected across a building at that scale is something the team takes real pride in.”