Unification anniversary celebrated with Elation
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The city honoured the peaceful revolution of the autumn of 1989 with numerous exhibitions, events and art projects. One of the most interesting was a Skynet of approximately 120,000 ultra-light, partially reflective flags onto which 30,000 people from all over the world had inscribed with handwritten messages and memories of the events of 30 years ago. Installed on behalf of the Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, the Skynet was the creation of Patrick Shearn and his team at the American artist collective Poetic Kinetics.
The lighting design for the super light Skynet, titled Visions in Motion, as well as for the closing ceremony at the Brandenburg Gate, was by Flo Erdmann working together with the Berlin artist collective phase7 performing.arts and their creative head Sven Sören Beyer. In order to be on both the safe and visually appealing side in Berlin’s November weather, IP65 rated lighting was a prerequisite.
"In November, at our latitudes, you have to expect bad weather and that's exactly what we got," stated Flo Erdmann. In fact, it rained nearly every day of the 14-day-setup and show. "For aesthetic reasons, domes were out of the question for me, so it had to be floodlights with protection class IP65. In the desired performance class and in the quality that one has to assume for such an event, in my view there is currently only one player on the market: Elation Professional.”
For illumination of the Skynet, the designer relied on 12 of Elation’s powerful 50,000-lumen Proteus Maximus LED profile moving heads, as well as 50 Paladin Panel LED lighting effects. The fixtures were placed on 12 large concrete pedestals that served as weights for the large crane towers to which the Skynet was attached. The lights illuminated the art installation from below, which enabled constantly changing impressions due to the dynamic capabilities of the luminaires and the flowing movement of the net.
“The Proteus Maximus impressed me in the showroom at LMP,” Erdmann continues, referring to Elation’s German distributor. “It fits in perfectly with the Proteus series. The output is huge and thanks to the framing system, I can easily use it as a keylight for large outdoor shows. Even large throws are no problem thanks to the luminosity. The fact that the Proteus units do not require additional weather protection had a positive effect on the 'event’s optics' and the setup time.”
The Skynet was admired throughout the festival week. “We illuminated it day and night, which made perfect sense on the grey days with bad weather,” Erdmann says. “While the Proteus Maximus partially projected gobo patterns onto the floating installation, we used the Paladin Panels to illuminate the area.”
The festival week ended with a big stage show that was developed by phase7 with Erdmann serving as lighting designer and director of photography. Here, 68 PRG-supplied Proteus Hybrid moving heads were used for crisp beams on stage and around the Brandenburg Gate.
(Jim Evans)
