Digital Wilderness – Trumpeting elephants, horses made of stardust and flying giant fishes star at Roncalli Circus. Still, the show does not employ real animals, but high-definitions animated holograms. Founded in Germany in 1976, the circus is known for focusing on human performances such as acrobats, clowns and poetic acts rather than on animals.

“With the holographic show we wanted to evolve the traditional circus experience in an imaginative and creative way. It was time to do a next step to the modern Times,” says founder and director Bernhard Paul to Archipanic.

Bernhard Paul invested half a billion euros to make his dream come true. The biggest challenge was acquiring and working with the most cutting edge technology on the market. “I wanted to have it in high quality“, continues Bernhard Paul. CDO Markus Strobl and a crew of fifteen 3D designers and software engineers developed the holograms.

11 laser beamer and a cloud computing with more than 3000 Processors made it possible. For the horses made of stardust they animated more than 1 million particles. The holographies are round just like a circus the stage. 

“As a circus you have to be open minded for everything especially for the feelings of the audience. Cause the Audience is our boss. When you feel that the audience does not approve of something then you have to change it”.

After the announcement not to use any animals at our shows Roncalli Circus received over 20.000 e-mails and letters from all over the world with a 95% positive feedback. Since the 300° holographic debut, the pictures and videos went viral.

Digital wilderness is an emerging trend. Discover more projects merging nature, technology and design: from VR head-set for battery-farmed chickens to a synthetic silk leaf, from algorithmically designed 3D printed nests for tarantulas to a kilometer long mycelium architecture…

Photos by @circustheaterroncalli.