Informationsteknik, the main contractor for lighting and sound which handled design and installation for the entire ship, was contacted last May by Prins Bernhard's owner who sought to do something 'really special' in order to put Malmö on the map for nightclub installations.
"We came up with the idea to design a nightclub concept with an LED wall as the main visual element," says Håkan Hansson of Informationsteknik who project-managed the installation. "We said 'no moving heads, no smoke machines - forget about all those solutions that have been done in nightclubs in the past.' We wanted the visual look to come from a media server so that the DJ could easily change themes and scenes. It is a new way of thinking and a totally new experience for the audience." After lighting tests were conducted by Informationsteknik, the client gave the go ahead.
Informationsteknik chose to use Martin Professional's FlexDOT LED strings to create a customised LED video display. FlexDOT is a lightweight string of intelligent, full colour pixels. Each pixel consists of a bright RGB LED driven by its own processor and individually addressable for independent control of colour, special effects, and animation.
Surrounding the Under dance floor on two sides is a FlexDOT LED wall approximately two metres high and 10m long. Custom-fitted into a wooden wall are 100 FlexDOT strings, each string approximately two meters in length. The wall contains a total of 2,100 individually controllable FlexDOT pixels spaced at a distance of 10 cm.
"With regards to the total design, including the construction of the wall, and in order to make an economical and practical solution, it made sense to use FlexDOT," Hansson comments. "It gives a lot of advantages for a lot of applications, wherever there are space issues for example. The size of the pixel is very small but the light output is fantastic which means you can use it in small areas. The ability to custom-make an LED wall gives lots of possibilities. It is also a system that is simple to set up. You don't need a lot of boxes; it's ready to run."
(Jim Evans)
