The Winter Olympics Will Have a Giant Kryptonian Face Projector, the World Engine Is Working

It seems that Zod’s plan to turn Earth into Krypton in Man of Steel wasn’t entirely unsuccessful, as this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi will have a building-size version of the pin art face displays used by the Kryptonians. They’re calling it MegaFace. Yeah, they pretty much named it after Megatron. Get your references straight, Russia.

The display is actually named for Russian mobile carrier MegaFon, which will host MegaFace on the side of its pavilion at the Olympics. A 500 square foot section of the building’s wall will use giant, six-foot long “pins” to transform into a tank up to three faces of Olympic attendees at once.

The pavilion was designed by architect Asif Kahn, who has managed to keep his Kryptonian origins a secret until now, it seems. Here’s how he’s got it set up in case you’re heading to the games:

3D photo booths within the pavilion and across Russia in MegaFon retail stores will scan visitors’ portraits to be recreated in by the pavilion. It’s facade is designed to function like a huge pin screen. It is made up of over 10,000 actuators which transform the building’s skin into a three-dimensional portrait of each visitor’s face.

The concept is to give everyone the opportunity to be the face of the Olympics.

The structure is sited at the entrance to the Olympic Park, and incorporates an exhibition hall, hospitality areas, a rooftop viewing deck and 2 broadcasting suites.

According to Gizmodo, each of the estimated 170,000 people who’ll have their face rendered on the building will also receive a link to watch the video of their face appearing and disappearing on the Internet, so here’s where you can watch how the faces will appear on the Internet, because we don’t want you to miss out (they’ve also got pictures of what the building will look like here):

The Kinetic Facade of the MegaFaces Pavilion: Initial Batch Test from iart on Vimeo.

(Asif Kahn via Gizmodo, image via Asif Kahn)

Meanwhile in related links

• MIT has been experimenting with similar 3D display technology
• General Zod drops the bass in the “honest trailer” for Man of Steel
• The Man of Steel blu-ray will explain even more Kryptonian technology