JEWEL opened in May with a superstar-studded launch hosted by Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, hip-hop heavyweight Drake, electro turntable stars The Chainsmokers and reality television sensation Kourtney Kardashian. To reinforce the luxury party vibe, Hakkasan Group commissioned international sound, lighting and visual design company AudioTek to "push the boundaries of technology" and create the ultimate nightclub environment for Sin City's elite.
The result is a high-impact, multi-sourced display based around the DJ's moving back wall of Ayrton Dream Panels, with both video and DMX surfaces, and Magic Dot fixtures. This works alongside five ribbons of ROE Hybrid LED which circle the main room and a video-mapped staircase leading to a mezzanine floor. AudioTek lighting designer Andy Taylor chose Avolites' Sapphire Touch, Tiger Touch II and Quartz lighting consoles with Titan Net Processors and Ai Infinity R8 and S4 media servers to control the complex set up.
"Due to the selection of fixtures, it was imperative to implement a control system that seamlessly integrated both lighting and video," Taylor explains. "Once suggested, everyone agreed Avolites was the natural choice."
Avolites' lead software developer Oliver Waits helped design the custom system, which links the video content, powered by the Ai media servers, to the lighting control of the consoles, allowing everything to be controlled by a single operator.
"The Ayrton Dream Panel is a unique fixture so we felt that we needed a cutting edge new software feature to create a spectacle for JEWEL's guests," says Waits. "Our solution was to link the video to the movement of the fixtures and directly link the Titan Key Frame Shapes feature of 2D points within the video to create movement that reacted to the visuals. Using our Ai media server, we were then able to directly link the two elements. The Titan console constantly receives video updates from the media server and uses these to control the timeline of any Key Frame Shape."
Hakkasan's director of video production Ed Shaw worked alongside production company Ne1co to design the video content, which is processed for the Dream Panel fixtures by the Ai media servers. A large portion of the content was designed to run on both sides of the panels using a DMX merge, resulting in a stunning dual effect that mixes high-resolution content on one side with brighter but lower resolution on the other as the panels are rotated. This content is reflected in the visuals that run across the ROE Hybrid LED.
"We wanted to match the content across all the fixtures as it creates a coherent aesthetic across the room, especially when there is only one operator," explains Shaw.
"The support from the Avolites teams both in the UK and the US was fantastic," says Taylor. "From allowing us to take over the warehouse to test out gear and do some valuable pre-programming, to them being on site in Vegas, they've been supportive far and above the call of duty, and are continuing to be so. I know they've kept in touch with the in house programmer, Jorge Tellez, to help him get to grips with this demanding rig.
"This was an incredibly challenging job from both an artistic and technological point of view, and it couldn't have been achieved without Avolites' cutting edge products. It was a great leap of faith from management at Hakkasan to approve the design and I don't think it could have been achieved without the incredible efforts of the team."
(Jim Evans)
