NOVA Light Labs designed custom winter visuals for Idle Hands, an immersive cocktail bar in Phoenix, Arizona.

Winter came to Idle Hands. The projected world behind the bar turns with the seasons, and NOVA was commissioned to bring the cold: snow, ice, and a night deep enough to drink by in the middle of the desert.

The answer is a timeless winter night. The view drifts forward through snowbound pines, past surreal snowmen glad of the company, beneath a mirrored sky streaked with stars. Snow keeps falling. The night goes on.

A 3 minute drift through a surreal winter night, projection mapped across a dual projector ultrawide canvas.

The camera glides. Beams of light rake through snow laden pines, colossal glassy snowflakes turn slowly between the trunks, and every surface catches a reflection. Overhead the sky runs like a mirrored tunnel through the stars.

At the center sits Idle Hands itself, a Victorian conservatory snowed deep into the woods. Bottles and glasses float through its glass frame by the hundreds, and the forest light passes clean through them. The whole structure glows.

The scene builds for 3 minutes, then a flurry of snow sweeps the frame and the world begins again.