Case Study – Corning’s Stunning Glimpse Into The Future of Glass

In February of 2011, the video A Day made of Glass was released on Youtube. In five and a half minutes it shows the life of a normal family in the near future – a family that is surrounded by innovative, interactive glass technology: intelligent windows, a mirror that functions as a multi-touch display, transparent tablets with augmented reality technology, flexible interactive glass displays and much more. Within just a few weeks the video had counted over 10 million views. Today more than 20 million people have seen it, commented on it and been amazed by it.

This video was made by Corning, a company with 160 years of innovation history. Founded to create the glass covers for Edison’s light bulbs, Corning has ever since been at the forefront of glass innovations and technology. A Day made of Glass gave a stunning glimpse into how Corning was thinking about the future of glass. Now, two years later, they are able to bring that vision to life!

In May of 2013, the German agency stereolize was hired by Corning to create an innovative presentation installation for the launch of the new Corning product ONE wireless at CTIA in Las Vegas. This was the second project the two companies engaged in together, and the requirement was: We have the A Day Made of Glass video. You make it real.

“Working with Corning is always an exceptional pleasure,” says Reiner Knollmueller, Creative Director at stereolize. “They understand that we are much more than just the guys who make fancy presentations. We are storytellers, and they give us absolute freedom to tell the best story we can come up with.” Thus, stereolize was involved in the entire preparation process for this show, starting at the choice of venue – the legendary nightclub The Act. The Art Deco interior of the club was the perfect stage for the highly technical and ultimately focused presentation design that stereolize had in mind.

With the video always in the back of our heads, our plan was to incorporate Corning technology directly into the presentation – to actually bring their vision to life and align it with their reality,” says Reiner. Using Gorilla Glass, one of Corning’s most famous and widely used technologies, a custom vertical interactive glass panel was manufactured to serve as the navigation interface for the presentation. To turn the glass into a touchable projection surface, two different foils by projection specialists Pronova were laminated onto the glass. One allowed for the reflection of the projected images, the other interpreted touch input. This glass panel was put on the stage, about two and a half meters in front of the backdrop projection surface. The result was that the speaker could freely move in between the graphics, never having to turn his back to the audience. Technology, content, interaction and speaker merged into one fluent presentation experience.

The presentation graphics also referred back to the video A Day made of Glass, which gives the impression of the entire world being one network of information which can be accessed from every glass surface. To put this impression into action, stereolize created a hand scan log-in procedure, with which each speaker could access his personal presentation content via the glass panel. An interface automatically unfolded, and through simple gestures the speaker could swipe the content from the glass panel onto the large backdrop projection surface.

For content creation, stereolize always relies on Ventuz. “Our entire history is based on working with Ventuz. It has allowed us to create the kind of installations that our customers deemed impossible.”

Especially the real-time nature of Ventuz is essential for the workflow that stereolize faces time and again. “We usually don’t get to practice with the speaker until we arrive on-site a day or two before the event,” explains Reiner. “Consequently, this is the time when a lot of changes and requests come up. With Ventuz we have full flexibility over the content until the last minutes before the show and can always comply with the customer’s wishes and needs.”

The Corning presentation was a huge success, for the company. A great number of guests gathered around the Gorilla Glass panel long after the show was over and engaged with the touch interface. stereolize and Corning are already working on the next big project to continue the story of innovation for a spectacular new interactive world.