For Vivid Sydney 2015, The Star temporarily installed 44 Clay Paky Sharpys and 10 Mythos fixtures onto their roof as part of an installation entitled Mission Control. The resulting light display was so stunning and popular, the venue realized there was potential beyond Vivid Sydney.
To celebrate Vivid 2016 a total of 36 Clay Paky Supersharpys were chosen for their enhanced optical design. Famous for its powerful beam, the Supersharpy produces clearly defined mid-air effects even at long distances. The Supersharpy's beam angle may be reduced to almost zero degrees by means of a perforated grid which provides a perfectly parallel beam, similar to a laser beam.
"We chose Clay Paky due to past positive experiences with the brand," commented Bruce Dwyer, head of lighting at The Star. "We did look at using Mythos but decided we would be paying for a lot of amazing features that we just wouldn't use in this application."
To protect the Supersharpys from Sydney's temperamental weather, each fixture is housed within a Clay Paky Igloo, a tough, sturdy enclosure that offers complete protection against rain and humidity, and maintains a perfect working temperature (between 0°C and 35°C) for fixtures even in hot or sub-zero conditions.
Thirty-six IP-rated ShowPro LED Flood EX36 are positioned between the Supersharpys for colour wash, thus adding another dimension to the design. Bruce commented that they actually looked at many other IP-rated wash lights but the EX36 really did work for what they needed at the correct price point.
Show Technology supplied a full turnkey solution for this project, with technical manager Mike Gearin working closely with Bruce Dwyer to put the system together.
"Essentially it's 36 lights managed from two MA onPC computers, main and backup, with MA 4port nodes," commented Mike Gearin. "The PC's were custom made by James Moore at Show Technology. We've designed it so that you can program a show from down on the pier where it's easiest to see the full effect of the lighting. The entire show is run from Agenda on the MA with Time Code taking over every hour; we spent a lot of time changing Agenda to be different every day so it's not the same show triggered at 8pm every night."
PCC Event Services supplied a wireless networking link that allows a MA Gigabit link 400m away down at the pier. The project sees the inaugural use of air fibre for lighting networking in Australia: two point to point networking 24 GHz at 1GB a second, 400m away.
Infrastructure included custom made power distribution from Indu-Electric in Germany, designed to fit the requirements of the project.
Bruce Dwyer commented that Show Technology's involvement with the project was exemplary.
A few days after the installation was completed, Sydney suffered one of its worst storms in history and the entire set up came through totally unscathed.
(Jim Evans)
