With many designers and programmers looking for new challenges during the lockdown, the ChamSys Online Programming Competition offered a creative outlet: the chance to program the power packed 200-plus fixture rig that CHAUVET Professional had earmarked for the company’s stand at the 2020 Prolight + Sound exhibit before the show was ultimately canceled.
Drawing over 200 entrants from around the world, the contest asked participants to create a three-minute or shorter show with the PL+S rig, using ChamSys MagicVis software. The large outpouring of creativity awed the panel of five judges, though it made their job of selecting three finalists more challenging.
After a careful evaluation, the judges named Amir Cohen of Tel Aviv, Israel the winner for his inspired two minute and thirty-eight second show. Cohen’s design flowed seamlessly in sync with dramatic musical shifts he selected, as it transitioned from blinding effects, to black outs, to swirling gobo patterns, conveying myriad moods all along the way. Amir dove into MagicVis and even wove in different camera vantage point angles to stunning effect in his programmed show.
Second place winner, Niklas Fuchs of Vienna, Austria, created a dramatic choreographed display of light in his three-minute submission, which was entirely busked, with no time code. Third place finisher David Misakyan of Moscow, Russia, devote considerable creative juice to matching his lights with the music, weaving a mesmerizing pattern of strobes and crossing beams around Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die.”
Cohen received a MagicQ MQ70 console for this winning effort. Fuchs and Misakyan were awarded premium swag bags, and 25 other entrants were given MagicDMX Test Kits. All earned the satisfaction of taking a show rig that never got to be, and turning it into a virtual engine of unforgettable looks.
The work of the contest’s three top finishers can be seen on the ChamSys Facebook page.