Christie, the global visual and audio technology company, has deployed its projection technology at Atlas9, a new premium immersive art experience in Kansas City, US.
The elevated experiential environment was envisioned, designed, and integrated by Dimensional Innovations (DI). It draws on the experience design firm's expertise honed over decades of working with leading names in entertainment.
Powering ambitious interactive experiences
Set within a fictitious 1990s cinema, Atlas9 offers interactive rooms and advanced gamification arranged across 46,000 square feet. Here, a projection experiment gone awry has brought stories from within film reels to life. As visitors explore the rooms and corridors, they will investigate the theatre's events and anomalies as the narrative unfolds.
Rooted in DI’s background in movie theatre design and fabrication, the experience has been driven by CEO Tucker Trotter to showcase the company’s impressive capabilities together with its sister company, DI Build, and partners including Infinity Sign System, Swell Spark, Perspective Architecture + Design, and Homefield.
Early in the project timeline, DI engaged Christie and worked closely with Paul Dumpel, Christie's senior sales manager, and the Christie team to bring Atlas9's design intent to life.
Atlas9
Christie projection technology powers two rooms at Atlas9, including Auditorium #9, a 240-seat immersive theatre where four 'best seats in the house' control audience-triggered on-screen moments.
John Coovert, solutions engineer manager, DI, says: "Guests interact in real time with the content that is on screen.
"Some of the seats allow you to play Pong, and another seat allows you to do some fun rendering on the screen via a joystick in the top of a cup that's in the cup holder."
Auditorium #9 employs five 4K22-HS Series laser projectors paired with Christie Mystique for automated alignment on a highly customised screen. The resulting system is named 'Holomax' within the Atlas9 storyline.
In the second room, the Headshot Remixer, guests are stylised into frame black-and-white Hollywood-style headshots.
“We capture your photo when you come into Atlas9, and when you go into the headshot remixer, it’s a kind of ‘cinematic anomaly’ that occurs in there," says Coovert.
"It shows your face projected onto the wall, and then it starts to remix your face with the previous three, four, or five people who have gone through the space previously."
The space uses two Christie 4K1600-JS projectors with ultra-short throw lenses: “It’s a small space, but we’re hitting almost three walls effectively with only two projectors.”
Atlas9
Delivering an experience of this size, scale, and intricacy is highly demanding, but “being able to have good partners like Christie to tap into and really help bring all the excitement that is Atlas9 to life has been fantastic,” says Coovert.
Since its launch, Atlas9 has elicited an overwhelmingly positive response and been honoured with the number two spot on USA Today’s list of the top 10 best new attractions of 2026.
Last month, Christie announced that its RGB pure laser projectors have been used in a light-and-sound display at Rani‑ki‑Vav, an 11th-century stepwell and UNESCO World Heritage Site in Patan, Gujarat.
