Designed to bring more citizens and visitors downtown to celebrate the season, Light Up Louisville is a four-block festival of lights and this season included two 15-minute timecoded on-street light shows set to Christmas music. The light shows played each of the 40 nights with colour projection onto trees, street lights and buildings all adding to the festive atmosphere.
Axxis, Inc. of Louisville was responsible for the entire production design and installation with Chris Burgin of Axxis handling lighting design and programming (Elizabeth Squire programmed the second time-coded show).
Axxis placed 16 Platinum Beam 15Rs in weatherproof domes on top of towers in the middle of a courtyard. According to Chris, "This gave us an opportunity to surround the audience with light as well as the option to hit the surrounding buildings, trees and people passing by. We put them on top of custom three-sided 15' tall towers that had the Fleur de lis (Louisville's symbol) etched into Plexiglas. We then lit the tower up with Elation ELAR 108 LEDs."
Axxis designed and constructed columns around each light pole in order to mount the Platinum Beams to the structure and sent the signal to each light via the fixture's built-in wireless system. "The Platinum Beam 15R's built-in wireless EWDMX Receiver was one of the most useful features for us," Chris says. "This allowed us to send signal across the city block without running any data cables. We could then get data to the ELAR 108s in the towers as well."
"Light Up Louisville ran for 40 straight nights and according to Chris there were no issues with the Elation lighting other than expected lamp changes. "We even left them on with a slow movement in order to keep them warm and keep the domes from frosting over and still there were no issues."
(Jim Evans)
