Tying this multi-dimensional festival together is a series of free-flowing musical performances by groups like Disco Biscuits, moe, Papadosio and Main Squeeze, all of whom jammed beneath an impressive pixel mapped linear display of Nexus Aw 7x7 panels from Chauvet Professional. The warm white LED panels, which were provided by The Design Oasis of Davie, Florida, were mounted on a beam that ran across the entire width of the stage.
"We used 12 of the Nexus Aw 7x7 panels," said Abbas Ritscher of The Design Oasis, who worked with LD Daniel Hiudt on the main lighting rig for the festival. "The panels were pixel mapped to create graphical images over the stage that went along with the musical performances. We also had text images appear on the panels. It was nice having the festival name not only displayed on the stage but also lighting up the air over it. The narrow beam of the Nexus made it well suited to display text. When the text scrolled across, it looked even cooler."
Powered by 49 warm white LEDs with an output of 9,400 lux at 5 meters, the Nexus Aw 7x7 also served as an audience blinder during the festival, helping to connect the crowd to the bands on stage. "The output of this fixture was more than up to the task," said Ritscher. "It's extremely bright. Some of the bands had lasers and high-output aerial effects in their rig, but the Nexus panels had no trouble at all showing up against them."
In addition to the Nexus Aw 7x7 panels, Ritscher and Hiudt relied on a collection of 12 COLORado 1-Tri Tour par style LED fixtures, also from Chauvet Professional. The designers used these RGB fixtures as front lights to add extra color to the downstage area. "The colour rendering was very smooth," said Ritscher. "We called up different colors to match different musical moods conveyed in the bands' performances. Quite a few bands were on the festival stage over the course of the weekend so there was a good deal of variety in the performance."
(Jim Evans)
