Forget the Myntini. These days, Champagne is the big drink at SOBE’s premier nightclub, Mynt 

The owners are doing a lot of celebrating, making a big toast to their designer Gianni Ranaulo, an Italian architect who uses light as an architectural tool.

“Midtown Video helped transform five-year-old Mynt into “something beautiful, completely different and constantly changing,” said one of Mynt’s managing partners, Romain Zago.

“I knew exactly what I wanted,” Zago exclaimed. “I had a concept, not a design. I wanted to make the club like an ever-changing show, using light, elevated sofas, tables and DJ booths so everyone could have a 360 degree view.”

Initially, Zago was going to order everything from Europe. But then he met Fernando Iglesaias, Midtown’s System Design Engineer. “Fernando was able to show us all our options, including video playback equipment and projectors,” Zago said.

“I knew it was important to have local support. If we have a problem, everyone at Midtown is super helpful, at any time of day or night.  Their quick response and backup is priceless. Midtown Video made it happen in one week, in record time.”

Midtown provided a Multi Screen Server system driven by a Creston control panel, allowing images to be displayed into any of the 10 Canon Video projectors.

“Individual images can be created as well as blended images between projectors,” Fernando explained.  “Gianni Ranaulo gave us the concept, using light as a way to design space. We came up with the solution for accomplishing this.”

“For us, it’s most important for a customer to wake up the next day and talk about Mynt’s incredible décor and music. And the great Champagne,” Zago chuckled.

ACT Productions, with Centaurus Media Group and Midtown Video, helped put on three separate events at Art Basel, the four-day Miami international art happening with 200 galleries representing over 2,000 artists who exhibited paintings, sculpture, mixed media, video and other artistic endeavors. 

Artistic director Michael Rush put three programs together at Art Basel, including
a special arrangement of projectors and screens at The Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, creating a one-of-a kind Art Video Lounge that featured the work of contemporary video artists.

“Midtown set up nine different screens in a museum-like setting,” explained ACT producer Nick Bousheri.  “Nine different videos played at the same time using sound tubes to control the sound levels. People could stand under the screens and just hear that specific video.”

Rush, a former Jesuit priest who holds a doctorate in theology and psychology from Harvard and the former director and chief curator of the world-renown Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, was recently named director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University

 “Artists can be prophets, and museums are their vehicle for communicating with the public,” Rush said.

Art Positions, a cluster of 22 shipping containers that were assembled on the beach at Collins Park between 21st and 22nd streets, was an extremely popular Art Basel experience that showcased up-and-coming artists.

Midtown provided an Eiki 10,000 Lumens Projector and a Sony DXC-D50 Camera to shoot the eyeball-popping Peaches Concert and project it onto a giant 40-foot screen.

For Chinese artist Grace Li, Midtown set up three cameras to shoot the crowd with a live feed to two projectors. “This lit up a 40 foot screen with huge images of people passing by the exhibition,” explained Jesse Miller, Midtown’s Rental Manager.

The live images were projected onto a huge canvas which covered the entire side of a container.  Artist Liu Ding then painted his interpretation of the crowd using a six-foot-long wooden staff with a brush head on the end.  Ding tried to catch the lines of the figures while artistically capturing the crowd’s movement and energy.

The “changing canvas” tied directly into “Situation and Happening,” the theme of Art and Positions.

Every minute counts at Art Basel. In the mornings before the main doors opened, Art Basel Conversations were already taking place in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

ACT Productions and Midtown Video set up a mobile television studio to capture panel discussions between major artists, collectors and gallery and museum directors. These important interactions involved well-known personalities on the international art scene including actor, producer and artist Dennis Hopper and philanthropist Irma Braman.

Art Conversations 2006 was organized in collaboration with Bvlgari. The transcripts from the discussions are published twice per year.