Central
Presentations Ltd (CPL) supplied projection and lighting equipment plus design
and programming services for the brand new ARC Festival, an innovative one day
event celebrating electronic music and digital arts, staged in three domed and
two tented structures in Eastville Park, Bristol, UK.
CPL’s
client was festival organisers ARC AP. The Festival’s directors are Ben
Thompson from the ARC Festival and Will Young from interactive experimentalists
Luma, who asked CPL’s Nick Diacre to specify and supply a video system for the
main stage and co-ordinate the supply of AV and lighting equipment to various
VJs and visual collectives working in other areas of the site.
The idea
for the Main Stage tent was to make the projections as immersive as possible
given the staging set up. Each artist performing onstage was accompanied by a
VJ and / or active visuals.
Will
Young designed a 20 metre
wide, 3 metre
high curved screen – custom made for the event – and Diacre spec’d a video
system that would work in the space and environment and could be utilised by
all the various artists.
“The key
was to keep it simple, flexible, and most importantly, quick and easy to set
up,” explains Diacre, who brought his vast experience of live visual playback
to the party.
This
proved a wise move, as in some cases they received visuals only a few minutes
before the ten artists over the course of 12 hours took to the stage – which
needed to be formatted and integrated into the system!
Diacre
used a Coolux Pandora’s Box media server as the hub of the operation into which
all the VJs playing live and any playback content were fed. From here it was
mapped to the screen and the multiple live feeds were processed using a
combination of a PLS200 and a Barco DVI matrix as well as EDID management
hardware.
Says Diacre, “Coolux’s Pandora’s
Box was the obvious choice. Through careful management of sources and capture
interfaces, CPL’s quad head media server
processed over 16 different sources in various formats with little effort. In
addition to sources and layouts, Pandora’s Box managed moving backgrounds during artist changeovers
at 4k resolution, as well as warping and soft-edge blending.
The
screen was fed by four Panasonic PT-DZ21K 20K HD projectors, fitted with the
shortest throw lenses and rigged on the front truss at extreme angles. They
were keystone corrected using the Pandora’s Box warping engine.
Lighting
in the main tent was designed by Will Howie, using a combination of CPL’s
Martin MAC Aura LED washes, MAC 700 Spots, Atomic strobes and Molefeys,
controlled via an Avolites Pearl desk.
The lighting was operated on-the-fly to complement and contrast with the
assorted visuals appearing onscreen and the general vibe of the live sets as
they developed.
The
L’Acoustics Kara sound system was supplied by Bristol based AF Live Audio Funktion and the stage was built by
Flat Earth.
CPL also
supplied assorted AV and lighting kit to various other areas including the
Polygon Stage, which was designed and curated by Skulpt. This
included Panasonic 10K projectors, PixelLine LED battens and a Slick trussing
ground support system.
A Barco
FLM HD 20K projector was utilised for exterior projections on to the Tangent Dome,
which took on a new life after dark, complete with live content generated by visual artists Lumen.
Just
metres away, the Axis dome was illuminated by 12x MAC 350 moving lights all
synchronised by a motion tracking system…
“Being a
new festival it was very exciting to work on this project,” enthuses Diacre.
“The challenge was that there were obviously a few ‘unknowns’ that were not
apparent until we were actually there on site,” – all of which he took in his
stride.
Being a
one day event, the timeframe was also limited and involved a couple of long
nights programming … however, the turnout and the level of interest and the
quality and nature of the art and performances all contributed to making the
first ARC festival a real success.
