UK - Southampton City Council has launched its spectacular Halation project, illuminating the city's historic 600 year-old High Arcades along Western Esplanade with colour-changing linear LED strips from Pulsar Light.

The initiative to highlight Southampton's five medieval arches near the waterfront is the result of collaboration between lighting artist Simon Watkinson and Southampton City Council, under public arts officer Liz Smith. Costing £74,000 to stage, the project - part of the Southampton Public Art Strategy initiative - has been funded by the Area Investment Framework (AIF) and rubber-stamped by the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and Southampton Partnership. Halation will run for a minimum of 18 months.

Tyneside-based Simon Watkinson's work (largely within the Old Town walls) is already familiar to the Southampton community, and he has turned frequently in the past to the local branch of Stage Electrics to help realise his ambitions.

This time the challenge was to soften the arches using lighting strips fixed to metalwork - designed to simulate the timber frame construction that was a feature of Southampton's Old Town. The metalwork 'arms' in turn create three 'virtual' arches within the five-arch superstructure, enabling the artist to mount a mesmerising stained-glass effect.

Acting as project manager, Stage Electrics' business development manager, Ed Gamble, considered how the artist's concept might be implemented, and proposed 55 lengths of ChromaStrip X3, Pulsar's IP65-rated RGB linear LED strips, driven over a seven-minute time cycle by a series Pulsar ChromaZone RMX3 operating under generic DMX control.

"We went to Pulsar because we are familiar with the product, we know it is IP-rated and we know we can support it as the back-up is excellent," says Gamble. "On top of that it has a very accurate beam angle of 45° so there is no overspill between the segments."

Handling the DMX distribution from the master position in the central arcade is a concealed Swisson device - part of a range of DMX manipulation and sine-wave dimming products from the Swiss manufacturer which Stage Electrics represents in the UK.

(Jim Evans)


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