Lighting Designer, Marc Janowitz has ensured high GLP impact for the stage show centrepiece of the band, Black Pumas.
Janowitz added GLP’s KNV Dot to his toolbox after first seeing the effect through sunglasses as part of a mesmerising array at one of the manufacturer’s New York demos, and later at both the LDI and Prolight + Sound expos.
“I had always lent heavily towards small fixtures I could dangle or arrange with minimal structure, but to be honest [KNV Dot] then fell out of my mind,” he explained. This was until the Black Pumas tour came along. “When this project came up, I started thinking about modular small sources, and this put the Dot back in front of me. We were running out of fabrication time and this was already engineered.”
Once they started rebooking shows post-pandemic, the band wanted their intertwined puma logo to be the centrepiece, as Janowitz continues: “They had made a Grammy appearance earlier that year and [the Grammys’ production] had built a logo piece for the occasion. From that, the band inherited the two puma cut-outs, intertwined – which they wanted to be converted into the centrepiece of their stage set.” Janowitz was then tasked with creating a design with the puma logo as its focal point.
Janowitz said: “Ultimately I chose the [KNV] Dot for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its ability to fit into a circular array. It could give a nice background surround; the installation into the scenery could easily be established – it just required space and a mounting bracket. The fixtures are lightweight, adding only 90lb [40kg] to the entire structure, and we knew the white light would cut through everything. We had established Gateway Productions in St Louis as the tour lighting vendor and worked closely with them on the integration of the Dots into the scenery.”
The structure was built by Gallagher Staging and the LED tape integration was handled by Edgelight RGB. One of four fixtures in the KNV series which can be combined seamlessly to provide a large canvas, the IP54-rated KNV Dot features a central 30W ‘hyper’ LED surrounded by 16 smaller RGB LEDs, which can be used as a pixel-mapped surface, strobe, blinder, washlight and more.
“The KNV series had always been impressive,” noted Janowitz. “As a large building block, the ability to use single sources in so many ways was a major draw, and was the final piece of the design puzzle, answering our need for a forward-facing fixture. And the fact that it was already housed solved a number of fabrication details.
“Together with the pixel tape, the way everything has been brought to life dynamically on this tour has been incredible.”