Gentilhomme Builds Interactive Beehive Projection Display for ROM
2026-10-30 · via invidis
Montreal-based multimedia studio Gentilhomme has completed an interactive projection installation for the Royal Ontario Museum, combining digital screens, floor-to-ceiling projectors and real-time camera tracking to simulate the inside of a beehive. The project matters to operators working in experiential and museum installs because it shows how camera-driven content triggering is being used outside retail and corporate lobbies, in a cultural and sponsor-funded context.
The installation was built as an extension of “Bees: A Story of Survival,” an exhibition that ran at the ROM in Toronto from May 16 to October 18, staged with support from Desjardins Financial Group. Gentilhomme and the museum set up a honeycomb-shaped booth outside the building. Visitors who stepped inside were captured by cameras that mapped their silhouettes, which were then used to manipulate projected content in real time across the screens and projection surfaces.
According to Gentilhomme, the digital content consisted of responsive particle graphics. When a visitor's outline was detected, the projected artwork split, swirled and flowed around that shape, turning the visitor's silhouette into a glowing honeycomb form with bees swarming around them.
Gentilhomme says the aim was to give ROM visitors something playful and shareable that tied back to the exhibition's theme of cooperation and collective strength. The studio describes the booth as designed to feel both institutional and organic, with each visitor shaping the space as part of a shared hive.
The announcement does not say what hardware was used for the projectors, cameras or media players, nor does it name the software platform behind the real-time tracking and rendering. It also does not disclose a project budget or visitor numbers for the booth specifically.
For signage and AV integrators, the project is a reminder that sponsor-backed museum activations remain a venue for combining projection mapping with computer vision, outside the more familiar retail and DOOH use cases that dominate the trade press.
The announcement in full
Reproduced from invidis for reference. Digital Signage Magazine did not write the text below.
A Montreal-based multimedia studio has partnered with one of Canada's biggest financial services providers to create an immersive simulation of life inside a beehive.
Gentilhomme, a multimedia studio headquartered in Montreal, created the installation as part of an exhibition that ran at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from May 16 to October 18. The exhibition, titled “Bees: A Story of Survival”, was conceived as an interactive exposition of what the official ROM program calls “120 million years of bee adaptation and survival, telling the epic tale of these incredible creatures and their relationship to us and the natural world.”
The ROM staged the exhibition with the support of Desjardins Financial Group. The museum and the financial services provider called upon Gentilhomme to create an extension of the exhibition – an interactive booth set up outside the building, inviting visitors to enter.
Inside the booth, digital display screens and floor-to-ceiling projectors recreated the interior of a beehive through continuous projection mapping. As soon as a visitor entered the booth, cameras inside the honeycomb-shaped installation captured their silhouettes and used them to transform the surrounding digital content in real time.
The screens in the installation displayed real-time, responsive digital particles. When a visitor stood in front of the displays, the cameras would map their shape and the projected artwork would split, swirl and flow around that outline. From the visitors’ perspective, their silhouettes would become glowing honeycomb forms inside the hive, with bees swarming around them in a choreographed dance.
According to Gentilhomme, the goal was to surprise ROM visitors with something playful and shareable. Since the exhibition was intended to showcase cooperation and collective strength, the studio explained, “we designed a hive at human scale, its cells enveloping visitors in a space that feels both institutional and organic. Every visitor who steps inside shapes it, together, as one hive.”