Airstar launches NEO range
- Details
The tube-shaped product measures 5m x 20cm and offers 8,500 lumens of brightness. The tubes can be either installed on the ground or mounted and are suitable for events and music festivals or as a part of a creative set.
Jean-Pierre David, an industrial designer at Airstar, who designed the product, explains: "It may sound odd, but the NEO concept could be described as a genesis of the Jedi lightsaber and my grandmother's kitchen neon. Although relatively simple, it is truly unique in the marketplace: it creates extravagant and creative lighting effects. Event professionals can let their imaginations run free with the help of this fun and easy to use solution."
NEO was trialled at this year’s Solidays festival, a major music event in Paris that welcomes more than 200,000 punters over three days. In order to mark the 20th anniversary of the festival, the Solidarité Sida association once again called upon Airstar for its lighting needs.
Fifteen NEO tubes were installed in the heart of the Solidays Club, a wooded area welcoming more than 2,000 people a day, located near the main stage ‘Paris’, the biggest festival stage in Europe this year. By deploying NEO, it was possible to overcome the sense of limited space due to the low height of the trees, while providing efficient, aesthetically-pleasing and glare-free lighting.
As a Solidaire partner of Solidays for the past 10 years, Airstar works in close collaboration with the festival's technical director, Raymond Lopez, who allowed the French manufacturer to use the festival again this year as a field test site for its latest inflatable lighting solution. Martin Leblon, the Paris based Airstar European Network (AEN) business event manager, presented the NEO concept to Lopez who then submitted the idea to Pleine Face’s founder and lighting designer Lorian Chauché, in charge of the Solidays Club lighting set.
"We were very impressed by NEO on several counts," comments Chauché. "First of all, the product offers a powerful yet evenly spread light, while its elongated and linear shape provides an impression of lightness, which lent itself perfectly to the space that we wanted to highlight. Finally, the ease and speed with which it can be installed makes NEO an illuminating solution with great potential for live events but also integration into a set.”
(Jim Evans)
