Artiste Monet on the Blackpool waterfront
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4Wall Entertainment contributed to this year's event by transforming the city’s Theatre D'Amour into an experimental art installation that incorporated effects from Elation Artiste Monet LED moving head luminaires. Called the 4Wall Theatre of Light, the installation features a 12-minute light show that runs four or five times an hour and continues throughout the festival’s 30 August to 3 November run.
Blackpool Illuminations manager Richard Williams and 4Wall UK’s Simon Stuart developed the concept with Theatre D'Amour designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen to bring modern technology into the theatre, a vision that involved the use of state-of-the-art lighting. “We wanted a high brightness LED fixture that would cut through the ambient level of light generated by Blackpool illuminations on the seafront,” stated Stuart, who has attended The Illuminations dozens of times. “Many units were evaluated and we found the Elation Artiste Monet to be the perfect fixture with an incredible amount of features that enhance the production.”
A recent PLASA innovation award winner, four floor-positioned Artiste Monet fixtures are used in the installation, working as part of a wider lighting and video package that includes LED beam lights, strobe/flood lights and moving LED video panels. “The beams are bright, colour mixing is precise and the effects generation offers a great range of effects,” Stuart said of the Monet luminaires.
4Wall's Howard Dean and Ben Perrin were brought in to transform the theatre with the help of Alex Burrows to look after the motion control, accompanied by Joe Willcox to programme the lighting. The installation is controlled nightly by the Blackpool Illuminations team.
"I have loved Blackpool since I was child," Stuart states. "The story of lighting can be seen through the history of the town and how lighting has developed from tungsten light bulbs to modern-day LEDs.”
(Jim Evans)
