Lighting Designer Nathan Wan created a high impact design for the Live Action Arena at the 2018 Autosports International show, staged at the NEC, Birmingham, UK, where a 1 hour special presentation showcased some of the fastest and craziest performance cars on the planet.
This delighted petrol heads and speed junkies of all persuasions who packed out the massive grandstand 6 times a day for the duration of the expo.
Wan has worked on the show previously, and this year wanted to introduce some new visual dimensions to the mix utilising pixel mappable fixtures, which he drove using ArKaos’s MediaMaster 5 control solution with Kling-Net protocol.
The ArKaos Kling-Net is now embedded in a number of pixel-based fixtures including Robe Spiider LED wash beams – allowing the distribution of real-time video data.
The quick and easy implementation of Kling-Net enabled Wan to drive the 36 Robe Spiiders on the rig, plus 70 metres of Chauvet Professional COLORband Pix LED battens with assorted video content that he had compiled and selected for the event.
The Robe Spiiders were rigged on top of 6, 5 metre high scenic L-shaped Singapore F1 night-race style gantries that reached 9 metres over the track. These were introduced last year for the first time and were a big hit, so building on this experience, Nathan wanted totally different and more beautifully fluid kinetic effects that capitalised on the map-ability of the fixtures.
With this in mind, he chose to rig each gantry with 6 Robe Spiiders.
Wan ran the fixtures in the minimum 27-channel mode to create some fabulous ‘eye-candy’ so all the heavy processing and math involved in colour blending, etc. was done simply and just by ArKaos MediaMaster 5 on his MacBook Pro rather than by running the lights in 123-channel mode and programming them via the lighting console.
The Chauvet COLORband Pix were positioned in a long 70 metre x 840 pixel row with gaps in between the units, curving around the low wall on the far side of the track, away from the grandstand. Once again, with graphic content fed into these units via Kling-Net from the laptop, a serious amount of programming time was saved.
In a scenario like this where time is tight, the Kling-Net option “is extremely helpful for creating complex and interesting looking effects” confirmed Wan.
The Live Arena is in a very similar setting each year, so it’s important to keep the space evolving and looking fresh and different for regular fans. They all enjoy the thrill of the race, the action and the exhilaration of high octane-driving and performance cars and so getting an equally stimulating light show in this demanding environment is the creative ‘bottom line’.
Wan is now regularly using ArKaos Kling-Net in his designs which have included a new Robe product video, launched at Prolight+Sound 2018, Frankfurt. At that exhibition on the booth itself, he used Kling-Net extensively to programme pixel mapped products for “Cirque Robe” a highly anticipated and unique live performance spectacular.
He also used it to drive fixtures on the Anolis booth at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2018 in Amsterdam, and to run lighting recently for a corporate event and product presentation in Hawaii.
The trend for lighting manufacturers to embed Kling-Net into a wide range of pixel products is expected to continue growing and ArKaos is dedicated to providing lighting and visual designers, programmers and operators with innovative and dynamic tools.