Lighting designer Andi Watson had been keen to develop a concept that was practical to tour for festivals as a 'special', but which could also be incorporated into the lighting rig and visual elements as the tour developed. Originally, he thought in terms of a video-based solution, but this transmuted into the idea of having a row of colour-changing LED battens upstage, capable of producing a variety of spectacular effects, as well as introducing a layer of texturing and depth to the stage.
Watson researched the LED products currently on the market before deciding on the James Thomas Pixelline 1044 batten, of which 48 were rigged vertically, end-to-end on 24 Manfrotto stands. Watson realized that with the battens he could still sculpt many of the effects he'd wanted to achieve with video. Initially, he was prepared to spend hours programming hundreds of groups run as HTP channels creating chases, although it soon became apparent that this was impractical.
Enter into the equation control software developer Richard Bleasdale. He and Watson initially met to discuss the use of High End Systems' Catalyst system at a later stage of the tour. In conversation, Watson described what he wanted to do with the LED battens and Bleasdale (who worked on the development of the Catalyst software), was convinced he could write customized code to enable the Catalyst to produce Watson's desired effects.The result sees the Catalyst treating each pixel like a video frame, with the Pixelline 'wall' run as one entity. The pixels were chosen on screen and mapped to DMX addresses, with the RGB values for each pixel being converted to RGB intensity values. Each selected pixel on the video frame is mapped to a corresponding cell on the batten. Watson has a 36-pixel high by 24-pixel wide screen - with gaps in between (for the US tour, Radiohead has invested in a further 24 Pixelline battens). The Catalyst is run from a Macintosh G4 Powerbook and connected to Ethernet via a series of Artistic Licence ArtNet boxes at the dimmers. Here, the signal is converted to DMX and sent to the Wholehog II console, which in turn is talking to the Powerbook, and sending DMX back to the ArtNet boxes.
Aside from the Pixelline phenomenon, the rest of Watson's festival rig - supplied in both the UK and US by Bandit Lites - included 35 Martin MAC 2000 washes and 13 MAC 2000 Performances as the core moving lights. These were joined by DWE and ACL Moles, some strobes and four half mirror-balls. Not a massive rig, but no barrier to Watson casting a varied and mercurial visual spell for the two-hour set.
Newly featured on the festival tour was a Ballista wireless network and comms system backstage, enabling a temporary phone network in locations such as dimmers, FOH and catering, which reduced radio use. The L-Acoustics V-Dosc sound system was supplied by Wigwam, and engineered by Jim Warren at FOH and Graham Lees on monitors. Warren used a Soundcraft Series 5 console for the system, which featured 24 V-Dosc boxes and 10 dV-Dosc - the latter underhung and along the lip of the stage. 16 ARCS enclosures providedin-fill where necessary, and 16 L-Acoustics SB218 subs took care of the bottom end. System processing was BSS Omnidrive and amplification was Lab.Gruppen. The V-Dosc itself was looked after by another Radiohead regular, Florent Bernard.
On monitors, Lees worked closely with technician Clive Goodwin. Each member of Radiohead has a customized monitor system, and the 22 mixes consumed all 60 channels of Lees' Midas Heritage 3000 console with extender. They ran a combination of L-Acoustics and Clair Brothers wedges, plus in-ear monitors and a Shure radio system for three of the band, whilst XTA's Audiocore software ran all the crossovers.
