Lighting for The Twilight zone was designed by DHA's Peter Fordham. He also created the original lighting design for the popular attraction when it opened in 2002, in which LTP was also involved in the supply. Once again, he approached LTP's Terry Reeves to commission and programme the Color Kinetics fixtures once they had been specified and installed.
Dark blues, purples and rich UV hues are the predominant colours in the Twilight Zone. It was important the environment was sufficiently dark both for its exotic residents and also to create the atmosphere, mystery and drama of the bottom of the seas, while still allowing enough light for people to negotiate their way around the room.
The iColor Cove EC's are 12" long RGB colour-changing LED strip lights. Fordham's design includes over 30 slots of light illuminated with these fixtures, ensconced into the display panels around the room. Reeves explains that the iColor Cove ECs were chosen as the most affordable, lower light intensity cove light in the iColor Cove product family, and also because of their additional reduced running costs. The fixture uses Chromasic technology to further lower the cost of digital LED control, thereby also lowering the cost of the total system. iColor Cove EC projects a soft-edge strip of light at a 120° beam angle and has a streamlined, low profile housing. Another plus is its easy 'through-hole' mounting feature, and the in-line power and data connections that reduce installation time and hassle.
The Twilight Zone slots contain a variety of iColor Cove EC combinations, some have a pair of strips, and others have 4, 6 or 8 fixtures. Reeves and Fordham worked closely together on site to programme the system. This was a complex and precise task, as Fordham required the iColor Cove ECs to have their own colour changing patterns within each slot, and then globally, for all the slots to run through several subtle room-wide sequences.
Reeves used CK's flexible ColorPlay software for this, which allowed him to map the fixtures, and create a graphic identification of each slot around the experience. Reeves says: "It was great to be asked back to the Deep to complete this next phase, and to work with Peter Fordham again."
(Lee Baldock)
