World renowned lighting designer Björn Hermann
employed 60 x Claypaky Mythos2 and 20 x Claypaky Supersharpy2 to
deliver two titanic light sculptures as part of global crystal producer
Swarovski\’s Festival of Light, hosted at their seven-hectare fantasy park
Swarovski Kristallwelten (Crystal Worlds) in Wattens, Austria.
Lead creative agency for Festival of Light was Berlin-based
international creative production company StudioNOW, who originated the
project\’s concept. StudioNOW worked alongside Hermann and German art collective
phase7 to create an adventure park of sound and light that included the two
colossal light sculptures crafted by the beams of Claypaky\’s award-winning
long-throw arc lamps. The Mythos2 and Supersharpy2 fixtures were supplied to
the event by German event production and rental specialist satis&fy.
\”The inspiration for the project came from the reflections
in Swarovski\’s world-famous crystals, which gave us the idea of transforming
the whole area of Swarovski Crystal Worlds into an enormous light
crystal,\” explains Sven Sören Beyer, the founder and artistic director of
phase7. \”A huge light sculpture encompasses the whole park, uniting the
individual elements into a single artwork that makes Swarovski Crystal Worlds
shine in a new light.\”
Creating this overarching light element were 60 of the highly
advanced, multi-award-winning Mythos2. The Mythos2 features a new and reliable
Osram Sirius HRI 440W lamp, which ensures the extraordinary performances that
have made the success of Mythos worldwide. The fixture also features a new
super-smooth dimming upgrade, which makes the product suitable for the most
demanding applications.
Hermann rigged the fixtures along the outer ridges of the
Swarovski Crystal Worlds park, spanning the back line of the famous Crystal
Cloud and Mirror Pool area. The Mythos2\’s powerful beams were programmed to
pitch a series of curves, lines and grids in the vast air-space above the park;
the designs emulating the refractive nature of light through crystal.
\”The central concept of this new event is the magic of
crystal, which only fully reveals its alluring beauty in a sparkling interplay
with light,\” explains Stefan Isser, Managing Director of D. Swarovski
Tourism Services GmbH. \”It is only by combining the magic of these two
phenomena that so many great and small moments of wonder can be created.\”
As part of the Festival of Light\’s \’Fantasy in Precision\’
installation, one of four major installations at the festival, Hermann rigged
20 Supersharpy2 fixtures to the roof of the four-storey Swarovski Crystal
Worlds\’ playtower. The outdoor installation was designed to extend the faceted
crystal patterns of the tower\’s architecture into the sky above.
Hermann utilised the Supersharpy2\’s intensely bright beam (over
three times brighter than its famous cousin the Sharpy), 0°-4°degrees beam
angle and large 170mm diameter front lens to create multi-layered webs of light
of varying brightness, colour and width. The fixture\’s super-fast PAN and TILT
(angle – PAN = 540° – TILT = 244°) ensured the beams travelled in clean and
precise movements.
The Festival of Light ran from January 30 to February 19 2017.
The Festival hosted a number of unique installations that lit up after sunset.
The four major light installations were; \’Fantasy in Precision\’; \’Aura\’, an
interactive display based on projection, animation and colour play; \’Red loves
Blue\’, an interplay of red and blue light across the park\’s famous Mirror Pool
and Crystal Cloud and \’Disorientation\’, where a sea of white light and fog
emerged from the Mirror Pool and immersed and delighted audiences.
Claypaky\’s
official distributor for Austria is Lightpower Austria, based in Traun.
