The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase is one of the Cannes Lions Festival's most popular events and premieres films by some of the world's best new talent. The event is renowned globally for the ambitious, sometimes outrageous theatrics of its opening events. And this year was no exception.
Sixteen free flying Quadrotor Robots, designed and built by Kmel Robotics, featuring mirrors on their undersides, worked in synchronicity with Clay Paky Sharpy luminaires to perform a surreal ballet of light and reflection. Razor sharp beams of pure white light danced in millisecond sharp time to a chilling electro soundtrack called 'Meet Your Creator'. The swarm of tiny flying machines looked like something out of sci fi movie as they performed synchronised flight patterns while at the same time each movement triggering a musical note via 'live' light manipulation.
This year's production was conceived for the second time by Saatchi & Saatchi's award-winning senior creatives Jonathan Santana & Xander Smith. They worked in collaboration with creative and technical directors Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) - a collective working at the intersection of art, design and technology.
"With this project, our aim was to create ethereal sculptures of light and sound," says MLF. "We're always excited by the prospect of appropriating new technologies and further developing them for artistic purposes. By customizing Quadrotors with LEDs and mirrors, and combining them with Clay Paky Sharpys and other custom technology, we were able to choreograph the performance, pushing the experience to that of watching an abstract virtuoso-being made of light, playing an imaginary musical instrument."
Pio Nahum, chief commercial officer for Clay Paky says, "We were mesmerised by the spectacular piece of work produced by Jonathan Santana, Zander Smith and MLF. It's really very exciting to see Clay Paky Sharpys take on such an integral and starring role in such a uniquely creative presentation. It certainly demonstrates the versatility and accuracy of the fixture in a way no other application has to date. We believe this heralds the start of a new beginning for creative ideas and lighting design concepts that use the Clay Paky Sharpy as part of its palette."
(Jim Evans)
