In keeping with his very individual 'randomonium' style of lighting and visual design, Jevons wanted to use them experimentally instead of conventionally, and so went for the video angle. He also utilized a RADlite digital media server to run the versatile PixelDrive software to create and run video clips and effects specifically for the Pixellines.
It's the fourth time running that Jevons has produced stunning visual designs for the biannual Radio One event - and the first time he's used Pixelline on the high profile event. Right from the outset, he's fused the media of video and lighting into a single fluid, symbiotic visual entity. However this time, using Pixelline instead of LED or other video projection surfaces, took the concept into a completely new direction.
For the band day - featuring Joss Stone, Razorlight, The Lost Prophets, Goldie Looking Chain and a host of others - Jevons positioned the 60 Pixellines in batches of five across his three truss lighting rig. They were also arranged to bring a sense of depth to the set. This allowed him to recreate spectacular effects across the battens - which effectively acted as a large, 'stretched' low res video screen.
The Pixellines were used like visual props - to evoke images of anything from white-knuckle fairground rides to dark, spooky, undulating slow chasing pockets of light, colour and pattern. For the Dance Day - headed up by Tiesto, Fatboy Slim, Judge Jules, Darren Emerson, Deep Dish and other groove-masters, the units were easily re-rigged to form a completely different look to the stage, and arrange either side of the DJ plinth.
Mostly he ran the units at just 5% brightness, which was plenty enough luminosity for both performers and audience and left loads of headroom for moments of drama and 'burn up', in keeping with all One Big Weekend events. He and Joey Jevons - who ran the RADlite server off an Avolites Pearl lighting console - created 45 video clips for the event. These were re-rendered as AVI files and stored on the RADlite hard drive.
Says Jevons: "The Pixelline's are just fantastic! This is only the first time that I've used them, but it's given me numerous ideas for how I can utilize them in future designs and live work of all types, using them as stand-alone and as a wild and wonderful combined lighting and video effect."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
