Italy – Lighting designer Nico Berna and his collaborator Simone Tassan Din are fond of circles and tend to include the shape in many of their designs. They are in good company. Described by the great mathematician Pythagoras as the most perfect of all shapes, the circle, with its infinite quality, has always occupied a special place in the hearts of creatives. Small wonder that Leonardo da Vinci decided to place his drawing of the famous “Vitruvian Man” in a circle!
Inspired by the eternal shape, Berna and Din decided to make the circle the dominant geometric form in their lighting design for the popular Nameless Winter 2026 hip-hop festival near Lake Como. To accent this configuration and bring out the transformative power of its contours, the collaborators decided to go with a rig made up of 146 CHAUVET Professional LED fixtures from Za Light Srl that was serviced by Milano Show Rent Srl.
“The only limitations we faced were the size of the tent and the impossibility of using rigging,” said Berna. “Simone and I almost immediately thought of a setup made entirely of CHAUVET Professional products to complement this design.”
Among the fixtures the designer selected were 41 Rogue R3 Beam moving heads, 19 of which were mounted on the circular truss, eight positioned on the ground behind the stage, and 14 hung from the truss above the LED wall. The relative light weight of this fixture played a role in its selection for the rig, but there was much more!
“We chose the R3 for its brightness—over 200,000 Lux at 15 meters—and its beautiful prisms,” said Berna, “In short, the R3 proved to be the perfect product, which is why we always choose it for indoor situations.”
Adding dynamic visual flair to shows during the two-day festival were 54 Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes. “We really use the Color STRIKE M in every project,” said Berna. “We’ve always had it in extended mode, with 97 channels. This is because we’ve developed our own range of effects that exploit all its capabilities, even in pixel-mapping applications.”
“We like to illuminate the audience, making them part of the set. So, we created these two lateral cuts, left and right, mounting 26 STRIKE Ms on the battens at a fairly low height, about four meters, mainly to involve the audience in the show. The other 28 were on stage, installed on either side of the LED wall. They are integrated into the set , and we used them a lot, sometimes to illuminate the battens behind them—because in these situations we like to emphasize the technical elements of the setup—and then a lot of strobe.”
The Color STRIKE M also was pivotal in helping the designers endow their shows with bold standout colors. “We used a lot of red in our design– and the reds from the SRIKE M are really beautiful,” observed Berna. “Then a lot of green, blue, and hints of purple and amber, basically our five basic colors that we use in this musical genre. I have to say that the Strike M is phenomenal for colors, from the softest tones to the most saturated, and always with great colorimetric uniformity between all the units.”
Working with the Color STRIKE M to enliven the stage, while also adding extra dimensionality to it were 51 COLORado PXL Bar 16 motorized battens. The designers had 27 of these units installed around the truss ring, suspended obliquely above the stage. Of the remaining units, 16 were mounted in a semi-circle around the DJ booth, and eight were at the base of the LED video wall.
“Installing the bars all around the circle immediately seemed like the right idea, creating a very present and dynamic outline that best highlighted the structure—and it worked like a charm,” said Berna. “The PXL Bar 16s have excellent macros, but in this case, we preferred to create them ourselves, within our show file. For example, we had real-time effects for initiating and closing the zoom, switching from a very focused blade of light to a wide zoom that was more ‘dirty. I must say it worked very well.”
The entire design did indeed “work very well.” Joined by VJ Gianluca Mognoni and PM Riccio Colucci, who the designers thanked for his role in shaping their careers, Berna and Din created looks, which like the circles their so fond of, offered infinite possibilities.
