Roy Ofer, founder and CEO of Sama-Sama, had the vision to create a fun and loose way to reach out to the visitors inner artist and connect them with their own creativity to the core of this new experience. Skip Sherman, chief creative officer of Sama-Sama describes it as "the evolution of entertainment. This journey takes you from your passive seat and lets you jump into the story."
The park hosts 10 different attractions called sections. Each one invites the visitor to try different aspects of creativity through music, rhythm, movement sound and lights
Cochavi&Klein light architects worked closely with artistic director Amir Schorr, designer Keith Greco and video director Pamela Schneider to create this extraordinary world of movement, video and light. Lighting designer Eran Klein used for the park four grandMA2 full-size and four MA NPU (Network Processing Unit).
Eran Klein explained, "It was clear to us from the first moment we had new challenges ahead. The concept of the show merges the need to design the space as real as opposed to a set that you light, because this set is alive by definition. The set gets energy from the audience and reacts to them. We chose to address the light as a form of communication. The light acted as a character if you will. For example in the biggest attraction the cubes (which is a massive wall build as 42 individual cells), you are invited to dance by watching a video and hitting four triggers.
"At the same time that you play in your own cube, the bigger picture is that you are actually taking a part in a huge show for the rest of the park to watch. This means we had to give you confidence so we used the key light only from the floor so you almost don't feel it's there when you dance."
Eli Cochavi CEO of Cochavi&Klein added:" It is probably the biggest and most complex systems ever done on a single show." The preproduction light design process took more than eight months and was made via WYSIWYG. Preprogramming was done on grandMA2 full-size supplied by A.B Electronics MA Lighting's distributer in Israel. The design integrated more than 2.000 light fixtures, the system ran on MA-Net via the MA NPU and was controlled by the grandMA2 full-size."
Klein added, "We are familiar with MA Lighting products since a long time and the decision to work with the grandMA2 was the natural decision in order to transform our dreams and visions into the real world. A system should act as a part of you and allow you to bring to life what you dream about. We needed a stable network based system that can run huge amounts of data and calculations from multiple sources."
Lights, sound and video systems were supplied by PRG Spain led by project manager Aitor Beloqui. Lior Mey-tal, Omer Israeli and Caco Garcia worked as lighting programmers. WYSIWYG programming and model were realised by Omer Israeli, show control, design and programming were by Shay Bonder. Corry KorKos was the chief technology officer, Amit Segal the chief abelton programmer.
(Jim Evans)
