The Rock Our World awards were created to honour groundbreaking achievement by PLASA members and to acknowledge the genius of both the creator of technology and the designer or integrator who applies the technology in a real world environment.
Rust is leading the session Performance Lighting Systems for the 21st Century- Magnitude of Change. This session will address the impact of LED performance lighting on the design of mechanical and electrical systems, and the operations and design perspective from the Kennedy Centre, home to one of the first all-LED theatres, of which Rust was the project manager and lighting designer. He will be joined in the session by Glenn Turner, head of production operations and maintenance at the Kennedy Centre, Dennis Wessel and David Woytek Jr. from Karpinski Engineering, and lighting designer Don Holder.
The first of Pilbrow's two panel discussions, Born Again Theatre, will feature a panel of industry experts discussing what to consider when developing new spaces to allow for future reuse of venues that were originally designed and built for a specific production. The panel will explore the challenges of repurposing a theatre space, and the audience will learn key infrastructure elements that make this transformation feasible.
Pilbrow's second panel discussion, An Incandescent Glow: Why Designers are Rallying to Save Tungsten, will focus on the increasing regulatory pressure US and UK lighting designers are under to abandon the tungsten filament, and the need of industry professionals to rally together in the Save Tungsten Campaign. The panel will look at the effect of government legislation that is starting to ban tungsten as an available light source. Attendees can join the conversation in an open dialogue with the panelists, manufacturers, and the industry-at-large about why this issue is of concern; why tungsten is an important source option to retain and how best to advance this campaign and awareness.
Theatre Projects employees Dawn Chiang, Michael Ferguson, Jules Lauve, and Matt Saide will also attend the conference.
(Jim Evans)
