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IN THE FIELD
IN THE FIELD: ARHT MEDIA HOLOPRESENCE FRESH FROM SIGNING A UAE AND QATAR DISTRIBUTION DEAL WITH NMK ELECTRONICS, HOLOGRAMBASED TECHNOLOGY PROVIDER ARHT MEDIA IS PLANNING A MAJOR MIDDLE EAST EXPANSION. TPMEA CATCHES UP WITH CEO, LARRY O’REILLY TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF THIS EXCITING TECH. Nobody could argue with the fact that video conferencing tools have been invaluable over the past 18 months. However, as many are tiring of Teams and experiencing a chronic case of Zoom fatigue, increasingly individuals and organisations are looking to alternative ways of keeping in touch while international travel remains difficult. Offering a futuristic solution to this universal issue is ARHT Media, whose HoloPresence technology allows presenters or artists to appear as a hyper-realistic, life-sized hologram, with the ability to interact with a live audience with no noticeable latency. “We’re in the business of beaming people around the world,” began ARHT Media CEO, Larry O’Reilly. “We have studios all over the world – from Toronto, New York, LA and London to Hong Kong, Singapore, Tel Aviv and soon Dubai and Qatar. We are the only company with a global footprint that is doing this.” O’Reilly was speaking to TPMEA during a trip to Dubai following the
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company’s recent deal with NMK Electronics, which saw NMK become the exclusive ARHT Media distributor for the UAE and Qatar. “The Gulf Region is embracing technology to overcome time and geography possibly quicker than any other place on earth right now,” said O’Reilly, discussing the partnership. “With NMK’s proven track record of working with government, enterprise and education in the region, we couldn’t have found a better partner.” The CEO was in town to join NMK in hosting a two-day event at Dubai World Trade Centre, which showed off ARHT Media’s technology to more than 80 guests, ranging from consultants and creative agencies to system integrators and end users. “As a value-added distributor, it’s our duty to always integrate new technologies in the market in areas where we can see a potential growth in demand,” stated NMK’s Business Development Director, Dino Drimakis. “We’ve already had a lot of interest and this event will
help educate potential clients even further about a technology that we believe will be the future in a range of different sectors.” While the agreement with NMK represents a major step forward in ARHT’s operations in the Middle East, the company is no stranger to the region, having worked on several high-profile activations – the most notable of which saw the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, turned into a hologram for his speech at the World Government Summit in 2019. “The mandate that we were given was that when Sheikh Hamdan was giving his speech, nobody in the audience should know that it’s a hologram – they had to believe that it was him standing on stage,” O’Reilly recalled. “The rationale behind that was that his speech was on the seven trends of future cities – with one of the trends being hologram technology lessening the need for travel. We then did a big reveal, turning
