This year's event had an appropriately expansive lightshow, thanks in part to the addition of the Rogue R1 FX-B LED fixture from Chauvet Professional.
Lighting designer John Hollingshead used 12 of the new Rogue fixtures, supplied by The Design Oasis, to create big, sweeping, transformative looks on stage that belied the relatively small size of his rig. The five independently controlled 3-watt RGB LED moving heads in each Rogue fixture, along with some extremely fast pan and tilt movements, helped him accomplish this feat.
"I became a huge fan of the Rogue R1 FX-B working with it for this festival," said Hollingshead. "The endless variety of patterns it delivered, its brightness, its rich colours all combined to make it look like there were five times as many fixtures up there than there actually were. The endless variety of patterns just swept people up and captured the spirit of the festival."
Flying his dozen Rogue R1 FX-Bs in a straight line on mid-stage truss, Hollingshead arranged the fixtures at different angles in a zig-zag stitching pattern. Drawing on the pan and tilt speed of the fixtures, while controlling the moving heads in each unit individually, he was able to create an array of mesmerizing pan and tilt patterns. At times he swept the stage with crossing shafts of light, while at other points he would use the Rogues for audience lighting and aerial effects, drawing on their 7° beam angle.
New possibilities and expanded horizons have always been at the heart of the Purple Hatters Ball, both in terms of musical awareness and spiritual well-being. In 2016, the same spirit of discovery applied to lighting rig too.
(Jim Evans)
