Slovenian lighting designer Crt Birsa and rental company Event Lighting’s CEO Jernej Gustin thought laterally – with the help of 48 Astera Titan Tubes – when lighting a livestream event staged at the impressive Cultural Centre of European Space Technologies (KSEVT) in Vitanje, Slovenia.
The spectacular award-winning circular building – designed by four dynamic architectural practices – is a concrete monolith comprising two low cylinders that create an impression of levitation and rotation. Inside, the central hall is surrounded by a main exhibition area, and both are connected by a round opening in the middle – a feature that makes it a hugely challenging space to light, and one that Birsa also used to his advantage in this case to imagine a very cool-looking lighting scheme.
Forty of the Titan Tubes were hung on steel wires between 1 and 3 metres in length attached to the ceiling, arcing 270 degrees around the circular space, and rigged utilising the venue’s own exhibition hanging system which made it straightforward to rig and fly. However, it was due to the light weight of the Titan Tubes that this was possible.
The remaining 8 x Titan Tubes were positioned on the floor to provide back-fill for one of the main camera positions which was from a balcony pointing down onto the presentation space.
“I love Titan Tubes and I would have used more,” enthused Birsa, “but … there was no more space to put any!”
Forty key personnel from the client company were in the building and involved in presenting the stream which was broadcast to several thousand staff and workers watching online around the world.
Birsa explained how the Titan Tubes were a ‘no-brainer’ in this situation: “They are light and with the wireless control there are no cables, they were easy to hang in the roof and they filled the space beautifully with quality and great looking light sources.”
Furthermore, the Tubes were addressed and the modes selected beforehand, so they arrived on site pre-prepped which also speeded up the set-up process. “We positioned them, turned them on and they worked brilliantly!” he declared.
He also mentioned the latest Titan software which displays the lamp number when the unit is switched on.
Birsa has been a keen Astera fan since first using the products – also Titan Tubes – in 2020 for a streamed gig by Lukas Šulić (one half of the 2CELLOS duo) at the Union Hall in Maribor, Slovenia. The next time was for another digital gig, this time in Trieste, Italy, for crossover Italian guitar quartet 40 Fingers.
Birsa puts serious thought into how he uses a product like Titan Tubes to ensure that his designs will always look “new, different and fresh” and he also doesn’t use them all the time or on every show for these same reasons.
He usually uses them in full pixel / 64 channel mode with 8 x units per DMX universe, and invariably he will programme and run them via his own ChamSys console, together with other lights on the show or event.
He observes that Titan Tubes have become a firm favourite in Slovenia amongst the film and TV community because of versatility and quality of the output which means they work equally well and efficiently for key, set or general lighting. The AsteraApp and the fact that the fixtures can be used in stand-alone mode adds to that flexibility.