SGM illuminates We Believe
- Details
“We have been very pleased with the corporation with Tine Bech, who, from the beginning, set extremely high demands to both colour mix and colour calibration. In Aarhus, we mixed P-5s with P-2s, and we could not see any difference in neither colourmix nor dimming,” said Christian Vigsø, CEO of VIGSØ, who supplied and installed the lights.
As part of the larger “playable cities” initiative, We Believe was chosen in relation to “Hidden Places”, established back in 2012, when Aarhus won the European Capital of Culture 2017 title. The two-part project has focused, on one hand, on forgotten and hidden urban places such as roof terraces with re-thinking potential, and on the other hand on mediation and citizen participation.
In line with Hidden Places’ goal to involve citizens, creative lighting designer Tine Bech’s We Believe light installation invited the public to participate in connecting two cities, creating art through play from a hidden place in the city.
“I think it is interesting with a European corporation here in 2017, where Aarhus is European Capital of Culture. We get a dialogue between two cities where art, design, and participation go hand in hand. An opportunity the LED lights have given us,” said Tine Bech.
Citizens were invited to control the facade lights from a control panel thoughtfully placed at a hidden terrace at Karolinegården’s rooftop. Programmed by Tine Bech Studio, the control panel, designed as three retro arcade machines enabled countless colourful light variations on both the facade of Aarhus City Hall Tower and The Royal Embassy of Denmark in London, which the participants could follow from a livestream through a pre-installed webcam.
“We used three SGM P-5s on the top three floors and a mix of P-2s and P-5s on the bottom three floors, which provided a beautiful illumination already 50cm from the ground,” said Vigsø about the illumination of Aarhus City Hall Tower, which used a total of 47 luminaires.
Tine Bech Studio wrote a bespoke program to control all the light in raw mode that linked the two buildings with the interactions by audiences and visitors in the control room. The lights were set in 10 channel (Intensity, Red, Green, Blue, White) mode and controlled over DMX through an Enttec DMX Pro controller by NodeJS software running under Linux.
“I was delighted to work with SGM and Vigsø. The P-5 provided just what I needed in quality and colour range to illuminate a large surface evenly,” said artist Tine Bech.
(Jim Evans)
