The show, known as Light of Venice was the first of 10 short commissioned son et lumière works conceived by projection artist Ross Ashton who teamed up with London-based UnitedVisualArtists and Tucson, Arizona's Darling Ltd. on the creative implementation. AVDB Group of Las Vegas further supplied the technical components of the production, including a new L-Acoustics ARCS II system.
Hidden behind a scrim to preserve architectural appearances during the day and not interfere with the video mapping at night, eight ARCS II enclosures are positioned in a horizontally oriented constant curvature array at the feet of the Madonna and Child statue located above the clock face. Three SB18i subs per side are stacked behind acoustically transparent doorways on the far left and right edges of the array, and three LA8 amplified controllers collectively power all enclosures.
"Our Venetian Showroom uses an original ARCS system and we've been quite impressed with its overall audio quality," says Paul Vella, Venetian/Palazzo director of technical operations, audio visual services. "So when Tyrone Kelley, my assistant director, and I were researching manufacturers' product specs looking for a low-profile box for our clock tower, we were pleased to see that the ARCS II with its improved K1 drivers really stood out because of its coverage pattern and audio bandwidth, especially when coupled with its sub counterpart, the SB18.
"Even though the ARCS II array is really quite small, its coverage pattern predicted in SOUNDVISION was very impressive," he continues. "In fact, when the consultants looked at our initial model, none of them believed it would cover as well as the software predicted, so they strongly recommended that we modify our design with some supplementary systems. But we had confidence in the product, and when the system was fired up for the first time, they agreed that no change was needed.
"So far, there's been nothing but positive compliments. The audio is exceptionally intelligible and crisp, yet extremely even in coverage over a throw of nearly 200ft - and we're not even pushing it."
(Jim Evans)
