House of Mamba

Rhizomatiks Design provided the planning and production on this project as one segment of the “Nike Rise” campaign, which scouted elite basketballers from across China. Dubbed the “House of Mamba,” this court consists of an LED display and motion tracking technology for a uniquely interactive experience. The system is programed to recognize the movements of each individual player in real-time, making it possible to display their movement in LEDs across the court. Furthermore, taking cues from video games, it’s also possible to display a “training menu” on the court’s LEDs, and conducting training regiments tailored to the abilities of each athlete.
An example of a highly fruitful collaboration between technology and sports, we created an entirely new breed of basketball court that allowed gameplay on top of approximately 30x15m of video coverage. We analyzed each minute nuance of the visual and movement tracking effects, with the goal of providing both athlete and spectator alike the once in a lifetime experience of playing ball on a court of dreams.

Client : Nike, Inc.
Advertising agency : AKQA London/Shanghai
Creative Director : Duan Evans (AKQA), Seiichi Saito(Rhizomatiks)
Producer : Leslie Cheng, Will Battersby, Matt Bennett, Nick Townsend, Jenny Lam, Douglas Diaz(Rhizomatiks), Keitaro Shimizu (Rhizomatiks)
Art Director/Designer : Meeyee Foong, Carlos Matias, Jianwei Wong
Programmer : Satoshi Horii (Rhizomatiks), Yoh Tanaka (Rhizomatiks), Yusuke Noborimoto (Rhizomatiks)
Hardware Engineer : Katsuhiko Harada (Rhizomatiks)