Light+Design

Floriade: 2 Million Blooms, a World of Light

HALF-SHELL HEROICS: Dialight’s Amber Solution Conserves Wildlife MOTLEY CUES: KISS LD Fulfils Glam Metal Destiny ORgAnIC RESpOnSE: Distributed Smarts Turn Control Upside Down (& Inside Out)

9 772200 913008

issue #2 JUNE 2013

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

Efficient Lighting Systems

NeuRA - Neuroscience Research Australia Engineer – Shelmerdines Consulting Engineers Architect – Cox Richardson Architects Distributed by – Jadecross

Efficient Lighting Systems Manufacturer of quality Australian made energy efficient lighting products and Australian and New Zealand distributor of Ligman exterior lighting products and Spittler interior lighting products

39 TINNING ST BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 PO BOX 5084 MORELAND WEST VIC 3055 PHONE: 03 9222 5522 EMAIL: info@elslighting.com.au

www.elslighting.com.au

DIAMO Brilliant lighting quality for powerful and dynamic accent lighting

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Flood Beam

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The specially designed reflectors provide absolutely precise beam patterns without any stray light, as well as perfect glare control. This is combined with highperformance LED modules, producing high-intensity pinpoint accent lighting with excellent lighting quality and maximum brilliance.

This diamond among LED downlights enhances both prestigious and functional areas in offices, powerfully setting goods in shops and retail areas brilliantly and is ideal for use in hotels – from reception areas to hotel rooms.

The portfolio features, warm and neutral colour temperatures to create a personalised room ambience, switchable and dimmable options, as well as three beam angles. zumtobel.com.au/diamo Exhibitor

4 June - 6 June 13 www.sparcevent.org

Visit us at stand 45.

EDITORIAL Grabbing Change With Both Hands

F

or the last couple of hundred years lighting has been in a state of constant change as first chemistry, then physics, then information technology, and now materials science, have brought us new sources and control technologies, and new ways of using them.

I’m just young enough to have seen the introduction of tungsten halogen (then known as QI) lamp technology as it swept away the vacuum and gasfilled incandescent lamps that had gone before them.

I have since watched successive generations of metal halide discharge technologies banish mercury vapour and low pressure sodium to the far corners of the warehouse and the car park. And I’ve looked on in disbelief as LEDs have gone from being monochromatic power indicators to monochromatic sources of illumination trying to be something else.

I’ve controlled light levels with mechanical dousers, several families of wire-wound resistance devices, and generations of saturable reactors desperately driven by everything from rectified mains and thyratron valves to precariously-reliable semiconductor amplifiers. I fell in love with SCR phase-control dimming until someone put a big sound system with unshielded cables in the same space, and later I gasped in disbelief at the immense complexity of solid-state sine-wave dimmers.

Like a good technophile, I’ve embraced each of these developments with their more complex maintenance requirements and their increases in efficiency.

I clearly recall when efficiency was all about getting more light from less power and thus saving money, but now those same processes are about saving the earth, and more importantly, winning somebody a bunch of theoretical green stars for their letterhead or their marketing campaign. I’ve remained relentlessly optimistic with each onward step – until the shortcomings of the brave new technology have eventually made the bad old technology feel like some wondrous golden age.

On looking around at the tools we have to use

for lighting today, not too many of them don’t come up looking just a bit sub-optimal. It appears very much like we threw out the CRI baby along with the incandescent-lamp bathwater, never mind that any remaining babies now look a little less healthy in the cold light of CFLs and LEDs. The discomfort of living long-term with substantially flickering light sources is yet another problem rearing its head since that bathwater was flushed away. And then there’s the switchmode ‘transformers’ and ballasts that may be more energy efficient – they’re certainly cheaper to manufacture than their inductive predecessors – but the destructive power of the triplen mains harmonics they produce seems to be something we should take much more seriously.

In this issue of Light+Design we take a look at some clever and innovative applications of existing technologies in some very interesting situations. Who ever thought that traffic light technology would turn out to be good for turtles?

We also look at couple of the potentially disruptive technologies that may wreck our current work practices. You can read about Organic Response, a ground-breaking Australian control technology that’s more responsive and more energy efficient for big commercial fit-outs than anything in use today, but that requires no control cabling and effectively no programming to commission.

Then there’s our feature on LUXIM’s Light Emitting Plasma, an electrode-less discharge lamp technology that’s more efficient and long-lived than LED, while also being brighter, more compact, with better colour rendering and, at 440MHz, shows no detectable flicker.

If you’re coming to SPARC or visiting the Vivid Light Walk, please come and see us and tell us what you think should be in future issues of Light+Design Andy Ciddor Editor, Light+Design You can reach Andy at andy@lightdesign.net.au

the very latest news. www.lightdesign.net.au

CONTENTS issue two

Derek Powell studied lighting as a television trainee at the ABC but then went to the dark side, learning to cast boom shadows as an audio director. He maintains a keen interest in the fine art of painting with light through his work as a video producer but now spends most of his time as a technical writer. While he can tell the difference between a scoop and a scrim, he is probably more adept with grammar than a GrandMA.

Cat Strom has been a writer for entertainment technology publications for more than 25 years and is also vice-president and co-founder of ALIA. With a background in graphic design, illustration and photography, she supplies PR and marketing material for several Australian lighting and audio distributors and manufacturers, as well as writing for a selection of international magazines such as Lighting Dimensions, Pro Audio Asia, Light & Sound International, Entertainment Design, CX and Pro Lights & Staging magazine.

Matt Caton has worked in various aspects of the entertainment Industry for almost a decade. With a background in marketing, and a focus on lighting and entertainment technology, Matt regularly contributes feature articles to a number of entertainment publications around the world.

His writing skills also extend to the stage and screen, as a successfully produced playwright, a budding screenwriter and a long-time blogger.

Matt’s other skills include producing, directing, acting, podcasting, lighting design and web design.

Owen Manley is the technical manager for Lighting Council Australia and is our resident propeller head, with 30+ years of experience in lighting with an engineering background.

He is also a member or chair of numerous international and Australia standards, government and industry committees. For 15 years he enjoyed running Thorn Lighting’s NATA accredited laboratory and playing with its expensive technical toys such as goniophotometers, usually trying to find their limits. Fortunately he has an understanding wife and son that are also used to his extensive travelling to support industry interests.

Paul Collison is the lead designer, accountant, barista, cleaning lady and all round good guy from Sydney based design firm eleven DESIGN. For 20 years, Paul has been a significant part of the Australian lighting design fraternity. During that time Paul has worked on productions, both locally and internationally, in the areas of corporate, arena, dance, television and large-scale special events. Out of self-defence, in recent years Paul’s firm has delved heavily into motion graphic content design and creation from a production design perspective.

Marcus Pugh has worked in the entertainment industry for more than 15 years. He has lit everything from TV to tours, corporate to circus, galleries to garages, and he’s still smiling and always up for a joke. Marcus now spends much of his time looking after a large client base for Melbourne lighting company Resolution X and searching for the perfect cup of coffee. He is currently a board member of ALIA and has a continuing passion for lighting in all its forms and fostering the next generation of lighting crew.

Light+Design Editorial Advisory Board Aaron Binion – ACETA Bryan Douglas – LCA

Jason Bovaird – ALIA Owen Manley – LCA

Marcus Pugh – ALIA

Ben Luder – IALD

Adele Locke – IES

Front Cover: Mandylights transform Canberra’s Floriade Festival into a night time wonderland.

Photographer: Philippa Adams Advertising Office: (02) 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Editor: Andy Ciddor (andy@lightdesign.net.au) Associate Editor: Jen Temm (jen@lightdesign.net.au) Publication Manager: Stewart Woodhill (stewart@alchemedia.com.au) Editorial Director: Christopher Holder (chris@alchemedia.com.au) Publisher: Philip Spencer (philip@alchemedia.com.au) Art Direction & Design: Dominic Carey (dominic@alchemedia.com.au) Additional Design: Leigh Ericksen (leigh@alchemedia.com.au) Accounts: Jaedd Asthana (jaedd@alchemedia.com.au) Circulation Manager: Mim Mulcahy (subscriptions@alchemedia.com.au)

alchemedia publishing pty ltd (ABN: 34 074 431 628) PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 info@alchemedia.com.au All material in this magazine is copyright © 2013 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. The title Light+Design is a registered Trademark. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication.

They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 15/05/13

CONTENTS issue two

8 Organic Resonse

A really different take on commercial lighting control.

9 Fifth Time Lucky

St Mary’s East St Kilda gets its fifth facelift for its 150th birthday.

10 Prolight + Sound Show

Paul Collison reports on his highlights from the 2013 show.

12 A Capital Display

Canberra says it with acres of flowers and thousands of luminaires.

18 Preserved in Amber

LED technology from traffic lights proves safer for wildlife and workers.

22 Beating Brightly

Restoring the building at Melbourne’s heart.

26 Through The Looking Glass Chunky Move bowls ‘em over with ‘An Act of Now’.

30 Motley Cue

In which a young man finds the road to glory is paved with metal.

34 Luxim’s Light Emitting Plasma It’s a metal halide light source Jim, but not as we know it.

38 Change Here For The Future Owen Manley keeps a watchful eye on the timetable.

40 Lighting Family News

News from the industry associations that make up the lighting community.

42 Review: A Greater Clarity LSC’s lighting control solutions deserve a double take.

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Organic Response Lighting control from a very different perspective.

Text: Andy Ciddor Danny Bishop is an engineer who doesn’t believe that central control is necessary for energy-efficient lighting in large areas. Quite the contrary. He’s of the opinion that a swarm of autonomous luminaires, each with just enough local intelligence to control the lighting for one small area of a large space, can provide the most cost-effective and energy-efficient lighting possible. The upshot of that concept is Organic Response (OR), an Australian lighting control system developed by Bishop, that could make a significant impact in lighting commercial building spaces.

Organic Response’s distributed intelligence system places a small sensor and control node in each luminaire, and gives it the capability to control the luminaire’s level and influence the behaviour of its near neighbours. The node contains an 8-bit PIC microcontroller talking to a quad-element passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor, a proximity-limited infrared transmitter, a narrow-field infrared receiver and an ambient light level sensor. Luminaire output is driven by a connected ballast control module, with modules currently available for either 1 to 10V or DALI-controlled ballasts.

For reliable operation, luminaires must be installed between 2.4m and 3.7m above floor height and may be spaced with their OR sensor nodes at distances ranging from 1m to 3m. At an elevation of 2.5m a node’s PIR sensor array covers an area of approximately 6m by 7.5m at floor height.

THE SWARM IN ACTION When the PIR in an OR sensor node detects movement at the same time as an insufficient light level is sensed, the node raises its luminaire to a preset ‘occupancy detected’ light level (such as 100 per cent) and holds it there for a preset dwell time. The node simultaneously broadcasts a level 1 occupancy message via its downward-facing, proximity-limited, infrared transmitter.

Any neighbouring node receiving the reflected level 1 occupancy message via its downward-facing, narrow-angle infrared receiver responds by raising its luminaire to a preset ‘nearby occupancy’ level (such as 75 per cent) and holds it there for the preset dwell time, unless a further message is received. The receiving node simultaneously broadcasts a level 2

occupancy message via its infrared transmitter to notify its neighbours that there is an occupant two luminaires away.

Each node receiving the level 2 message is triggered to raise its luminaire to the ‘distant occupancy’ preset level (such as 50 per cent), which it then holds for the preset dwell time, unless a further message is received. Occupancy information propagates rapidly throughout the space, creating a pool of light around each occupant, without the need for any central control or defined communications architecture.

To avoid plunging the space into darkness, if no further movement is detected during the dwell time the node fades the luminaire down to a low ‘previously occupied’ level (such as 25 per cent) over 30 seconds, and after a further preset period (such as five minutes), fades the luminaire off.

The PIR movement detector is sufficiently sensitive to be triggered by everyday work activities such as watching cat videos or updating your Facebook. In the very thorough field trial undertaken by consulting engineers Arup at Level 9 of the CBA head office at Darling Park Tower 1 in Sydney, none of the participants was plunged into darkness, even when undertaking normal office activities. (The full report on this field trial is available on the OR web site.)

All operating parameters such as the level and dwell presets of each OR sensor node can be modified in the field through the use of an infrared transceiver connected to an iOS device (iPhone/iPad/iPod) running OR’s control app.

By integrating the capability of daylight-sensitive and occupancy-aware lighting into its minimal installation and commissioning system, Organic Response has developed a responsive and very fine-grained control system that holds the potential to have an enormous impact on energy-efficient lighting for large open commercial spaces. It’s currently negotiating with leading fixture manufacturers in both Europe and Australia to take OR-equipped luminaires to market.

We’ll keep you informed of their progress in the news pages of the Light+Design web site.

Organic Response: (03) 9486 9823 or www.organicresponse.com.au

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02

03

FIFTH TIME LUCKY St Mary’s Church in Melbourne’s East St Kilda has recently undergone its fifth renovation: just in time for its 150th birthday. Designed by noted English architect William W. Wardell, who also designed Melbourne’s landmark St Patrick’s Cathedral, the building has been undergoing restoration and conservation in the hands of Andronas Conservation Architecture since 2008.

The church is listed on the Victorian heritage register so the restoration process required substantial research. The initial interior colours chosen by Wardell have been used where possible, but in some areas there was a need to blend with some of the more recent upgrades.

Architectural lighting designers 2B Designed were engaged for the interior lighting upgrade, which was only undertaken once the fabric of the exterior was conserved. “It’s the first such building that we have lit solely using LED light fittings,” explains design principal David Bird.

“The approach taken was to reinforce the interior architecture as well as focus light on the activity in the sanctuary. At the same time we wanted to allow the congregation to see and appreciate the interior, not only as an area of worship but also as a contemplative space.”

“We selected low-glare fittings mounted at the base of the ceiling, such that they are as invisible as possible yet provide accent to the ceiling, sanctuary, walls and, of course, the congregation. The positioning of the downward fittings was aligned with the windows to reinforce the light provided by Mother Nature.”

Great care was taken in selecting the LED sources to ensure they were all the same warm colour and had similar colour rendering.

Bird describes the selected fittings as “a modern version of a low-glare 150W PAR38” but in this instance they are actually a mix of Space Canon 30W and 18W LED fittings, in both flood and spot beams. All fittings are controlled from a Dynalite dimming system to allow for the composition, recording and replay of a range of lighting scenes.

2B Designed: www.2bdesigned.com.au Suppliers: Lightmoves: www.lightmoves.com.au Space Canon: www.spacecannon.com.au Tridonic: www.tridonic.com Philips Dynalite: www.philips.com/dynalite Photographs: 2B Designed – Kire Bogoevski

9

SHOW ROUNDUP: PROLIGHT + SOUND Frankfurt, 10-13 April 2013 Cautiously confident industry offers a new focus for lighting

1. VMB

2. Robe

Text: Paul Collison Prolight + Sound is now the biggest and most important trade show for entertainment technology in the world – every manufacturer makes significant efforts to peak at this time of year. It attracts more than 40,000 visitors and almost half are from outside the EU. Walking around the show, it was hard to imagine any more people attending. It was certainly full, and Halls 9.0 and 11.0 were packed to the rafters with lighting, video and staging equipment.

VMB Lifters: Rated at 55kg, the Show Lift tower lifters (Pic No 1) are extendable up to 4m high. Best of all, they can be controlled by DMX. They seem to be ideal for lighting fixtures or set pieces, and can add a great dynamic feature to a show, product launch or trade exhibition. For what seems to be a fairly mundane piece of kit, they are generating a huge amount of hype.

Clay Paky: The Sharpy Wash is the talk of the town.

Built on the technology of the original Sharpy from Clay Paky, the Sharpy Wash has a similar beam to its brother but with the benefit of colour mixing. On top of that is an impressive 6.5-48° zoom. Clay Paky also heavily pushed its Aleda range of moving LED heads.

With a software revision that includes a range of new inbuilt macro effects designed by UK lighting designer Tim Routledge, the Aleda has come from being a ‘me too’ product to being a very good lighting fixture.

With LEDs being such a focus in recent years it was refreshing to see some different innovations. There seemed to be a proliferation of fixtures with 200W+ lamps with parallel beam. Interestingly, their efficiency is better than many LED sources when you look at the lumens per watt ratio. Perhaps most refreshing of all was the level of optimism from manufacturers. Gone was the financial pessimism of 2008 and 2009 and while no one was out to spend, spend, spend, everyone seemed quietly confident that the financial wheels of the entertainment technology world were finally creaking back into action. Here’s a taste of the highlights in lighting.

Robe: The rock star of the show, with a live appearance by MotoGP star Karel Abraham causing a stir. Robe introduced The Pointe (Pic No 2), its version of a parallel beam fixture with a 280W Osram short-arc lamp making it blindingly bright. The new Robe Cyclone raised some quizzical eyebrows – part light and part Dyson, the Cyclone’s integrated fan can cool performers or blow smoke around a stage.

10

3. Martin

LSC: Made a splash with its completed lineup of Clarity LX series lighting control. Poor Ritchie Mickan from LSC Australia talked non-stop throughout the exhibition and almost certainly lost his voice by the time he got home. This stand was one of the busiest of the show. [Paul’s review of the Clarity console is on page 42 – ED] Studio Due: Had a new version of the old City Color (Pic No 6). With a new LED source, it weighs in at only 32kg and is almost as bright as its older sibling. Featuring a new yoke system for ease of focus and barn doors that may actually contain some light, this might just be a useful and cost effective way of lighting a stage or building.

High End: Looking cool with the new Hog4 hardware. It will be interesting to see if this range and the revitalised Hog3 software will get the Flying Pig back in the air. Judging by the amount of interest at the show, they might have a fighting chance.

PRG: Conspicuously quiet. Not known for being flamboyant at these types of shows, their booth was particularly low-key and not many visitors were showing interest in the control system or Bad and Best Boy fittings.

4. SGM

5. Avolites

Martin: Is not being quiet about the fact it is now owned by an audio company. I think the Soundcraft console parked in the corner of the booth was a sign of good humor more than anything else, but there is no doubt Martin is now part of the global giant Harman. Martin had a right to be in good spirits with its Wiper, sorry, Viper range blowing everyone away.

The Performance and Wash fixtures are stunning, and the AirFX will redefine the ‘beam’ category yet again. Martin also announced its new Rush range of low end fixtures. These are Chinese OEM fittings that Martin is so comfortable with that it is offering two years’ warranty as a sign of confidence. Visitors also got their first real look at the new M6 lighting control surface (Pic No 3). It is a very serious offering and should have others in the mid to high end lighting control category taking notice.

Avolites: An impressive stand with a whole new range of futuristic looking consoles (Pic No 5). Time will tell if they take off but there were more than a few people showing interest.

Chromlech: These guys win the award for the coolest promo videos ever. Fortunately they also have the products to back them up. With products like the Elidy and Jarag, this French manufacturer had a good presence with its modest stand.

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6. Studio Due

Robert Juliat: Easy to find as always, with its whopping great Lancelot followspot shining into the roof. The company has a new range of LED profile and wash fixtures aimed at the theatre and television markets, and is now more prevalent than ever in Europe.

Aarkaos: Moving more and more into the video market. Its Media Master software is impressive with 3D modeling and warping featuring, making Aakaos a more serious contender against media server competitors.

ETC: Replaced its seemingly young EOS with the EOSTi, refreshing the model with a sleek new housing. With one of the most excellent button actions and smoothest faders, the Ti is a beautiful console to sit behind and is a massive improvement on its predecessor. With all the same features that EOS users love, the Ti will seamlessly become the new standard.

SGM: Martin’s founding owner Peter Johansen now owns this Italian brand outright. Since moving operation to Aarhus, just down the road from his former company, SGM has been busy innovating with LED niche products. PL&S saw a sneak preview of its new G Spot (Pic No 4), an IP65 LED based profile.

The G Spot is still being refined but there is scope for it to become popular for installs and even smaller festival work, depending on its cost of course.

Canberra says it with flowers Text: Cat Strom

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F

loriade, Australia’s biggest celebration of spring, is held every year in Canberra during September and October. For 30 fragrant days, the garden beds of Commonwealth Park become canvasses for super-sized floral pictures.

Floriade’s flowerbeds depend on a million-plus flowers blooming on cue. This creative collaboration between landscape gardeners and nature takes 18 months of planning and careful planting.

Tulips, irises, daffodils, violas, chrysanthemums and daisies open their petals in bold designs which each year reflect a different theme. Past themes have included ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll in Bloom’ and ‘Poetry in Flowers’ while the most recent Floriade boasted the theme ‘Style & Design’.

For just five nights Floriade comes alive after dark with NightFest when the garden bed designs, pond waters and trees are shown in a whole new light.

Mandylights first created the lighting for the evening display in 2010. Mandylights senior designer Richard Neville says this was when they discovered the park had no records of underground cabling – they needed to put in close to 400 metres of trenches. The following year they stepped it up a notch with a lighting installation set to music, and from that point on lighting became a key marketing aspect of NightFest.

With the site essentially the same each year, 2012 saw the need for a new bag of tricks.

FLOODING THE BEDS

“We approach NightFest with the central idea that if you want to see the flowers in all their natural bloom, then come during the daytime,” Neville says. “The first couple of years of NightFest were really just about flood lighting the flower beds in white light. We have since introduced a creative element with the garden beds lit in many different ways, which allows guests to see the beds presented in a completely diverse way at night.”

Some flowerbeds are now lit entirely by strung festoon lighting, some are backlit, some are beautifully evenly lit and others are only lit by certain colours.

As Mandylights does not own a large stock of lighting gear, Neville says they have the added advantage of not falling into the trap of having to use what they have in their warehouse.

“We start from scratch and shop around from gear suppliers,” Neville says. “We’re not committed to any one supplier and that gives us a lot of freedom that other companies do not have. It lets us select the best possible fixtures for each bed, each year. Further to this, if we can’t find the exact product we want locally, we’ll go overseas and get it made for us – this means we really never have to compromise on the design we want to install. The 2012 event featured equipment from a number of suppliers. PRG Lighting in Sydney were fantastic as always with the supply of most of our equipment.”

Mandylights also installed its own power and data distribution system under the park, which is now a permanent fixture. Access equipment and labour was sourced from a number of local ACT companies.

The night time lighting makes no apologies for distorting the natural colours of the blooms in the process of transforming Floriade into a magical visual adventure.

Photographer: Chris Holly

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TAKING CONTROL

Last year the company introduced an interactive element to the main vista, comprising six garden beds occupying 200m x 50m. A total of 48 Martin MAC301 LED fixtures, positioned in groups of six, took care of lighting the largest part of the site and their control was handed over to the public.

“It’s the iconic view of Floriade that they use in all of their marketing,” Neville explains. “It’s also the first part of the park that visitors see so it had to be impressive. With the theme revolving around style we thought it would be suitable if the public could apply their own style of lighting colour and effect to each bed.”

Each of the six beds was fronted by an iPad with custom made software that talked to the MA Lighting MA2 lighting console via MIDI. The lighting console then triggered off a number or a combination of cues that instantaneously changed the MAC301s.

“It was very simple for the visitor to choose between a few colours and chase patterns, Neville says. “The MAC301s would do their individual colour changing courtesy of the public for five minutes, then they would do a two-minute show programmed us. We found that people absolutely loved it.”

For Mandylights, NightFest isn’t always about how many moving lights you can install – just around the corner was a flower bed lit entirely by festoon lighting. They couldn’t find the exact festooning required for the job and had to design their own. Close to three kilometres was made in China, shipped to Canberra, and then all the bulbs were hand painted.

Another flowerbed was lit theatrically by ETC Source IVs and gobo rotators, delivering gently rotating textures to create the illusion of movement.

Mandylights also designed and made its own mobile truss towers to use as lighting positions around the park.

LIGHTING THE WAY

The area of the park known as The Rhododendron Garden has become something of a pet project for Mandylights. While not technically a flowerbed, let alone one planted especially for the event, it is a major thoroughfare during the day but was unlit at night. The challenge for was to install a creative treatment that also illuminated the pathway.

“The first year we hung illuminated umbrellas and last year we did a massive mapped video installation with LED fixtures,” Neville says. “We had something like 20,000 individually controllable LEDs set to music. The area became so popular, security had to be hired to manage the people coming through. In 2012 we decided to do something totally opposite with mainly UV floods and 15

Top: Floriade by night is a very broad canvas to paint on: Photographer: Chris Holly Far Left: The Rhododendron Garden, transformed with video-mapped LED tubes which also made an appearance at Vivid 2011. Photographer: Chris Holly Left: Kangaroo Pond was surreptitiously lit from within by 300 video-mapped submersible LED fixtures.

Photographer: Daniel Mercer

only half a dozen PAR16s. We designed and made 500 hanging stylised paper cranes – which were actually acrylic – to create a huge flock over 100 metres. It was quite dark and eerie, a total contrast to the year before.”

trigger things based on factors such as how many people were by an installation,” Neville explains. “If there was a huge crowd that were very responsive, we’d trigger more shows. Of course, if there was an emergency we could quickly go to white light.”

The Mandylights team are on site for a month SECRET GARDEN and Canberra in spring can get down to -3°C at The team decided that its ‘big show’ should take night and up close to 30°C during the day, plus it place in an area that had never been used before can also be very windy.

– the Kangaroo Pond, an artificial body of water “As we only have a couple of weeks to install 50 metres long. They had the pond drained so everything we have to go ahead rain, hail or shine,” they could install 300 custom designed and made Neville says. “In 2011 it rained for nearly all of underwater LED fixtures that were then mapped to the bump in and the event but 2012 was better, video. A few moving lights were added to surround- although the park does have a particularly active ing trees while others were uplit, and a PA system possum population which we were always coming was installed. up against.”

“It was really cool because people didn’t know Despite the practical hurdles, the Mandylights it was there,” Neville says. “They knew there was team thoroughly enjoy working on NightFest due a lighting installation somewhere in the park but to the absolute creative freedom they are given by they would have to discover it. The installation the events team. “For 2013 we are looking at being would lie dormant for five minutes then come to involved right from the initial planning of the flowlife, a crowd would gather and then the show would erbeds, so we’re looking at building them into the finish and everyone would dissipate. It created a beds in autumn when the top soil is laid,” Neville big buzz and a lot of publicity – although it took us says. “It’s a really rewarding event to work on and a week to clean the LED fixtures afterwards.” attendance grows every year.”

The entire site is networked with every bed And visitors thoroughly enjoy Mandylights efrunning its own series of cues with central conforts. According to ACT Tourism surveys, the trol from the MA2 console. Sequences were proNightFest lighting has become the most popular grammed around the site in a way that encouraged aspect of the festival. Attendance has increased people to take a second trip around the park. and the show was recently named Canberra’s most “The major installations we ran via remote conpopular annual event. trol on iPhones or iPads, and that allowed us to

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Festooning, long overlooked in a world of moving lights and colour-changing RGB fixtures makes an impressive comeback.

Custom-built festooning, hand-dipped in lamp dye in the traditional 20th century style, gives exactly the right colour for the look.

Photograph: Philippa Adams

Project: St Mary’s Cathedral, St Kilda Lighting Design: 2B Designed Luminaire Supplier: Lightmoves Photo: Kire Bogoevski Spec: A mixture of 30W and 18W LED fittings, in both flood and spot beams. All fittings are controlled from a Dynalite dimming system to allow for the composition, recording and replay of a range of lighting scenes.

Luminaires: Space Cannon

Project: GPO Melbourne Client: ISPT Lighting Design: Webb Australia Luminaire Supplier: Lightmoves Photo: Joe Casamento/Casamento Photography Spec: Aurora 600 RGBW fitting lighting the window arches. The 65 anodised aluminium 600mm wide units contain 32 Philips Luxeon LEDs, which are DMX512-controlled with Remote Device Management (RDM). JilSpot RGBW spots are used to uplight the facade’s columns, and Aurora 300 RGBW LED strips to light the bottom entrance archways of the facade.

Luminaires: Space Cannon

Australia

Space Cannon Australia Pty Ltd 3/169 Beavers Road Northcote 3070 Victoria Australia

sales@spacecannon.com.au tel. +61 (0)3 9486 5366 fax. +61 (0)3 9923 6249

Installations at: Melbourne Theatre Company - Sumner Theatre - Eastlink Hotel - Royal Mail House - Maxims Of Behaviour - Giuseppe Arnaldo - Crown Casino

PRESERVED IN AMBER LED technology adapted from traffic lights proves safer for wildlife and workers.

Text: Derek Powell

S

ometimes the most unusual enquiries can lead to big business. In this case, a seemingly offbeat question on the floor of a trade show led to more than $2 million in ongoing business for Dialight ILS Australia.

The project was the Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility off the northwest coast of Western Australia, the largest single resource development in Australia’s history. The challenge was to meet an extremely tough and highly technical specification for industrial and marine lighting.

“It started back in 2009 with a query from one of the project’s environmental team,” recalled Dialight Australia’s managing director Malcolm Lee. “They wanted to know if we had any ‘turtle-friendly’ lighting products.”

As Lee was about to discover, ordinary light fixtures can be deadly to the endangered sea turtles that breed along Australia’s remote coastlines.

Turtles come ashore to lay their eggs and return to the same beaches time and again to dig a nest in the soft sand of coastal dunes. Australia is one of only a limited number of places in the world where turtles will lay and is home to six of the seven species known in the world. Most of these species are listed as either ‘endangered’ or ‘critically endangered’ and are the subject of vigorous campaigns to preserve their numbers.

The Gorgon project is located on Barrow Island, a Class A nature reserve and a prime turtle breeding habitat. The developers take their environmental responsibilities very seriously, and ensure all exterior lighting visible from the sea and the lighting on the vessels used to service the project follow strict turtle-friendly lighting specifications.

This Page: The flatback sea turtle, at home on Barrow Island.

Opposite Page: The fixtures must operate in an environment that includes both extreme marine and explosive hazards.

Photographs courtesy of Dialight ILS.

wind up killed on roadways or eaten by predators, never reaching the safety of the water.

Fortunately, turtles are less attracted to certain wavelengths of light in the orange-yellow part of the spectrum around 590nm. Conventional turtle-friendly lights for beachfront properties use dichroic filters or apply special films to conventional tubes to make the light less visible to turtles.

In addition, lights are kept low and baffled to keep stray light away from the dunes to avoid attracting turtles away from the protection of the ocean.

However, the conventional lights on the market just wouldn’t work for this project.

RIGID STANDARDS

The Gorgon project includes the construction of a 15 million tonne per annum LNG plant and a high capacity domestic gas plant to supply gas to Western Australia. Not surprisingly, a gas plant is designated as a hazardous location, requiring the use of fittings that are intrinsically safe to the IECEx certification. The intent with any intrinsically safe product is that it must not, under any circumstances, be capable of generating a spark or heat that could trigger an explosion if flammable gases are present. It’s a very tough standard that requires rigorous testing along with design evaluation and production control.

Existing commercially available turtle-friendly lights simply aren’t built to such standards.

The lights also needed to meet another crucial optical criterion: a CRI (colour rendering index) of better than 25. Low CRI or monochromatic lights can be dangerous in particular workplaces as they make it difficult to distinguish colour-coded wires and valves, or to read some colours of text.

Adding another complication, the project is BRIGHTEST ATTRACTION located in an extreme, cyclone-prone, marine enviOrdinary light fixtures near coastal dunes can cause problems in two different ways. First, female ronment, requiring a fitting that could operate in turtles will only lay their eggs at night and are dis- extreme temperatures with an IP rating of 66 to 67. turbed by bright lights on the shoreline when there “IP67 is proof against water deluge,” Lee explained.

“The only tougher ratings are for a light to operate should be a dark, quiet beach, so they may return underwater.” [See our IP decoder panel- Ed] to the sea without laying. For hatchlings, there is The conventional solution to industrial hazardous an even greater threat. All the eggs in a nest hatch area lighting would have been low-pressure sodium at once, long after the mother has left. As they fixtures, he said, but there were multiple issues with emerge from under the sand, the hatchlings must navigate unaided to the ocean. They do so at night this approach. Low-pressure sodium fittings do not meet the CRI specification, while glare and spill to avoid predators and find their way by crawling light are often poorly controlled in conventional towards the lowest brightest horizon, normally the fittings. They are also sensitive to voltage change, starlight and the moonlight reflected on the sea.

Artificial light near the coast can be a disaster as it slow to warm up and re-strike, have moderate energy efficiency and are not intrinsically safe. may attract the dozens of baby turtles, which can

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They wanted to know if we had any ‘turtle-friendly’ lighting products.

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With nothing available off-the-shelf, Malcolm took this mixed bag of specifications back to the Dialight factory in the UK where the engineering team got to work. Dialight is already the largest manufacturer of traffic signals in the US and UK and is very experienced in high intensity amber LEDs. After testing proved that these LEDs would meet the colorimetric specification, the company developed special versions of their SafeSite area lights and DuroSite bulkhead fittings to meet the Gorgon requirements.

TURTLE TRAFFIC GREEN LIT

The result was a range of Zone 1 LED luminaires built specifically for the industrial, oil and gas sectors. The strict colour control coupled with efficient optical distribution delivers a LED lighting solution that is fit for purpose while minimising environmental impact. Other benefits include up to 70 per cent less energy consumption, instant on, broad ambient operating temperature range, resistance to shock and vibration, high IP ratings and longer service life. All this makes the new range of turtle-friendly Dialight LED luminaires a viable choice for environmentally sensitive coastal applications.

One of the important deployments was on board 17 supply barges and support vessels operated by Mermaid Marine Australia. The craft range from 5000hp tugs to massive 75m cargo and water carrying barges, and include specialised accommodation vessels and a floating desalination plant.

On deck, the Dialight DuroSite bulkhead fixtures (WPA-4A3H-FLGC) are installed pointing vertically downwards so the dispersion characteristics keep light where it is needed and avoid spill and glare, providing the ‘dark sky’ conditions required from an ecological standpoint. They are also wall mounted along walkways, stairwells and adjacent to entry doors using angle-mount brackets. The 5kg cast aluminium fittings are mechanically robust and can be specified in 11W or 22W versions with either 9 or 18 of the 590nm amber LEDs. On shore, turtle-friendly fittings are installed throughout the industrial area. Here the full cutoff fixtures including around 250 of the 70W SafeSite (HZA8A2N) area lights are mounted quite low to the ground and directed away from the coast. The combination of an integral reflector and a ribbed lens produce accurate pattern definition to keep spill light to a minimum, while providing the required area and task lighting.

Following the success of the Gorgon project, Dialight turtle-friendly amber luminaires have been given the green light for a much wider deployment. The fixtures are now being fitted in iron ore ports and sensitive areas right up and down the Pilbara coast as well as in Queensland.

The metamorphosis from traffic lights to turtle lights is a definite win-win-win for Dialight, the industry and the environment, and yet another niche for adaptable LED technology.

Dual-row fixtures feature a sharp vertical cut-off to reduce spill and thus misleading the local turtles. The outdoor operational life of the ratchet strap is likely to be somewhat shorter than the LEDs. Photograph courtesy of Dialight ILS

IP (INGRESS PROTECTION) DECODED FIRST NUMBER (DUST)

SECOND NUMBER (FLUID)

Protection against 0 No Protection Solid objects over 50mm, e.g.

1 accidental touch by hands

Protection against 0 No Protection

2 Solid objects over 12mm, e.g. fingers

2

Solid objects over 2.5mm, e.g. tools & wires Solid objects over 1mm, e.g.

4 small wires 3

1 Vertically falling drops of water Direct sprays of water up to 15° from the vertical

3 Sprays up to 60° from the vertical 4

Water sprayed from all direction limited ingress permitted

Dust - limited ingress; complete 5 protection against contact (no harmful deposits)

5

Low pressure jets of water from all direction - limited ingress permitted

6 Dust - total; no ingress

6

Strong jets of water from all direction limited ingress permitted

7 Immersion between 150mm and 1m

More information: Dialight ILS Australia: (08) 9244 7600 or www.dialight.com.au

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Long periods of immersion under pressure

‘NOW YOU CAN COMPARE APPLES WITH APPLES’

Now with the world’s first and only AV equipment comparison tool www.av-iq.com.au Powered by

BEATING BRIGHTLY Restoring Melbourne’s heart.

Text: Matt Caton Images: Joe Casamento / Casamento Photography

Melbourne’s grand old lady of a General Post Office, all dressed up for Christmas.

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espite design alterations, changing tenants and even a fire in 2001, Melbourne’s grand old GPO building still captures the look and feel of the Victorian era with its famous clock tower and stately arches. One of the city’s best known landmarks, its heritage-listed design dates back to 1859 when it first served as Melbourne’s General Post Office and as the original ‘heart of the city’ as the point from which all road distances from Melbourne were measured.

Redeveloped as a shopping precinct in 2004, the GPO now serves as a major arcade with cafes and boutique shops and it’s hard to imagine this quintessential Melbournian space being any more eye-catching. But when the decision was made to restore the historic facade, owners ISPT contracted lighting designers Webb Australia to give the building an even greater presence.

The project evolved over several years according to Webb lighting consultant Rob Hamilton. “For many reasons the project was delayed, then it was off, then it was on again,” he explained. “We did a number of tests over a long period of time using different fixtures and different solutions. Right from the beginning the real trick was finding a solution that was energy efficient and it’s interesting that by the time the project got the final go ahead, the lighting technology had evolved drastically from that in the initial designs.”

DAMAGE CONTROL

Heritage-listed buildings can be a nightmare for contractors and the limitations with this installation were no different. Furthermore, the building had been permanently lit back in the 1950s and was not only inefficient by fancy modern energy standards, it had also taken some damage to the facade. Hamilton knew things were going to have to be planned extremely well. “The biggest issue from the heritage aspect was to ensure we didn’t leave any permanent damage to the building,” he said. “This made attaching fixtures pretty tricky as we had to reuse holes that were already there or use grooves.”

Heritage architect Lovell Chen was involved with the whole process, from fixture selection to the cabling used, and was even on site to ensure the 22

building was not harmed in any way.

Webb Australia engaged Lightmoves with Space Cannon to supply the lighting and control system that would bring the project to life as they were able to develop a bespoke LED fixture solution to meet the design criteria, and used a warm white in its luminaire that proved ideal to enhance the stone of the building façade. The three companies had collaborated before on large-scale lighting features in Melbourne including the kinetic artwork maxims of behavior in Bourke Street, and the Lonsdale Gateway LED installation.

After a thorough and lengthy testing process – which included a column and arch mock-up created by Fabian Barzaghi at Space Cannon’s Northcote factory for proof-of-concept testing – the Space Cannon Aurora 600 RGBW fitting was chosen to light the window arches. The 65 anodised aluminium 600mm wide units contain 32 Philips Luxeon LEDs, which are DMX512-controlled with Remote Device Management (RDM).

Space Cannon’s JilSpot RGBW spots are used to uplight the facade’s columns, and Aurora 300 RGBW LED strips to light the bottom entrance archways of the facade.

THEME SCHEMES

The colour-changing aspect of the installation is stored and triggered by DMX512 on an Enttec E-Streamer MkII. In keeping with the DMX512 standard, no more than 32 DMX devices are wired in a single DMX daisy chain so a series of DMX splitters were used to correctly distribute the signal to all the luminaires. The TecArt four-way DMX splitters not only distribute the DMX signal to up to 128 luminaires, they are also RDM-enabled, allowing bi-directional communication with all luminaires across the whole installation. This allows the user to remotely and individually address each luminaire to monitor its internal operating temperature and to set its start address for commissioning and programming.

All the lighting presets were programmed into the E-Streamer MkII which is linked via RS232 to a Philips Dynalite DTP100 touchscreen at that serves as both the automated time and event scheduler and the user interface.

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More information: Client – ISPT: www.ispt.net.au Lighting Design – Webb Australia: www.webbaustralia.com.au Lighting Supply / Programming – Lightmoves: www.lightmoves.com.au Luminaire Manufacturer – Space Cannon Australia: www.spacecannon.com.au Electrical Contractor – PSG Elecraft: www.psgelectric.com.au

A selection of the preset colour scenes available to GPO building management.

Left: Space Cannon’s Aurora 600 RGBW 60mm wide was unit contains 32 Philips Luxeon LEDs. Right: Space Cannon’s JilSpot RGBW spot fixture.

The Dynalite touchscreen allows ISPT to choose from a number of preset options such as ‘all white’ or ‘all blue’, and also includes specific colour schemes for particular themes. There are presets for Winter, Summer, Autumn and Spring modes, for example, and tailored themes for St Patrick’s Day (all green), Breast Cancer Week (all pink), Red Nose MS Day (all red), Mental Health Week, Chinese New Year, New Year’s Eve, Australia Day, and even an Aussie Sport mode.

TIMELY DELIVERY

Installing a large lighting system in the middle of Melbourne’s busy CBD is laden with issues so extensive time was put into planning, according to Lightmoves project manager Aaron Binion. “The heritage aspect enforced strict limitations on our cable runs but as the fixture has an integral power supply and is designed to be installed in a daisy chain, we only need to run one cable carrying both power and data in and out of the fixtures,” he explained. “This removed the need to muck around with individual power supplies. The cable lengths were each custom designed because the design would not have worked if any excess cabling could be visible.”

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A large scaffold was constructed that travelled right around the façade. With detailed and very precise schematics, electrical contractor PSG Elecraft installed the entire project over a three-week period with no road closures – worth some mild bragging considering the scale of both the project and the building.

Once installed the lights were programmed by freelance programmer Lynden Gare using a full size GrandMA console and Visualiser located in an empty shop in the Galleria shopping centre directly across the road. This location provided a serendipitous vantage point and was linked in to the GPO installation by a temporary wireless DMX system.

The final icing on the cake of this permanent installation is its incredible energy efficiency. Aside from using LED fixtures, the Philips Dynalite relay controllers feed 240V to all luminaires, thus providing a system that is truly eco-friendly. If the ‘all off’ preset is activated, the touchscreen not only issues a command to send all DMX levels to zero, it also instructs the relays to cut all mains power to the luminaires.

online

www.lightdesign.net.au

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Chunky Move bowls them over with An Act of Now Text: Marcus Pugh Photographer: Jeff Busby

More information: Niklas Pajanti: www.niklaspajanti.com Chunky Move: (03) 9645 5188 or www.chunkymove.com Resolution X: (03) 9701 2411 or www.resolutionx.com.au Dome Garden Supplies: (03) 9282 1988 or www.domegarden.com.au

Above: On arrival at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl the audience are confronted with a glowing, smoke-filled glasshouse at centrestage.

Opposite: Trapped in the glasshouse, the dancers use every available toe-hold for their performance.

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small building with transparent walls and a roof lit with low-pressure sodium-lamps would usually be associated with activity of the horticultural variety. But put that building on stage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, fill it with dancers, give one of Australia’s best lighting designers free rein and you have a unique – and stunning – artistic vision.

An Act of Now was Anouk van Dijk’s first show as artistic director of Australian contemporary dance institution Chunky Move. The show won The Age’s Critics’ Choice award for the Melbourne International Arts Festival, sold out its season and met with almost unanimous critical approval.

While the piece delivered the excellent artistic themes and execution audiences have come to expect from Chunky Move, what made it so evocative was the non-traditional approach to the technical elements. As a punter, I found it exciting to watch - and as a hire manager for production partner Resolution X, it was my privilege to provide the show’s lighting equipment.

Audience members put on wireless headphones as they were ushered to the top of the hill overlooking the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Here we drank in a vista that encompassed the open face of the venue, framed by the Melbourne city skyline.

On the darkened stage, the smoke-filled glass house suddenly burst into life with strobe light, synced to flash in time with a heartbeat audio track. A solitary silhouetted figure, at first glance part of the inanimate structure, stood guard over the audience as it made its way into the seat banks.

From this perspective the glass house – now clear of haze – was dwarfed against the cavernous expanse of brightly lit amphitheatre.

The show began, dancers materialising via a trapdoor in the floor of the house and exiting with just as much mystery. Later, as cast members swung and hung from the structure’s roof beams, the transparent box took on the role of a living and 26

breathing character; with interior lighting it became an intimate, welcoming space that drew the audience in; lit from the outside, it was an isolated specimen case.

CLEAR CANVAS

The Bowl and the glass house provided Niklas (Nik) Pajanti with a canvas on which to paint his inspired lighting design. His palette included lowpressure sodium lamps, 1500W QI lamps, metal halide lamps, molefay eight-way blinders, cool white LEDs embedded in the perimeter of the floor, and Martin Atomic strobes. And that was just for the interior of the house. As the rest of the walls and ceiling became performance surfaces, Pajanti used the structure’s central beam to rig his lights.

Outside the house, Pajanti placed traditional theatrical pars (ETC Source Four MFL PARs), while colour-changing 2.5kW HMIs (Studio Due City Colour 2500s) backlit the performance space and the amphitheatre backdrop, with the assistance of weatherproof cast-iron PAR64s. Clay Paky Alpha 1500 Profiles provided much of the ‘punch’ lighting into the glass house. Pajanti opted for a short throw here and used the framing shutter system to keep his shot tight, but then employed the fixture’s extensive focal range to light dancers 30 metres away when at one point they ‘escaped’ the glass house.

An Act of Now was the continuation of a vision that Anouk van Dijk staged previously in different forms with her own dance company in the Netherlands. Once appointed artistic director of Chunky Move, van Dijk was keen to make her mark and begin her tenure with a work that was both audacious and technically experimental. Pajanti, already established as one of Australia’s best lighting designers in contemporary dance, was an excellent fit for her interpretation. Having designed for dance and theatre since 1998, the bulk of his work has been with Chunky Move under previous artistic director Gideon Obarzanek.

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GLARING PROBLEM

Though aware of van Dijk’s previous works, Pajanti came to this show’s development phase with a blank slate and drew on the director’s vision. One of the most challenging aspects of the design for Pajanti was the relationship of the audience to the glass walls of the house.

“In simple terms, reflections from the lights easily became a glare source if they weren’t positioned exactly right, and the set became tiring for the eye to look at,” he said. Once this had been overcome, Pajanti consulted van Dijk on which sections of the show would be lit internally and externally, and which would be a combination of both: “The sense of being drawn into the house, experiencing what the dancers were experiencing, or being pushed back into more of an objective observer’s position was directly related to the different combinations

of light and smoke I used. It took a while to get this right.”

Unlike most lighting designs where a designer or production manager simply emails a supplier a list of off-the-shelf equipment, Pajanti and the production team at Chunky Move had to think outside the box – literally. After some research they discovered that many of their requirements were shared by hydroponic gardening enthusiasts and the ideal lamp, power supply and housing were available from Dome Garden Supplies, a ‘grow shop’ in a less than salubrious suburb in the west of Melbourne.

“Going out there was like being in an episode of Weeds,” Pajanti said. “The store had solutions for every conceivable way to grow plants in limited and secretive spaces. It was mind boggling. They also gave us advice on extraction fans and conduits, which we used to control the 28

smoke levels in the house. I don’t think they quite believed me when I said the lamps were going to be rigged in a glass house used in a dance show for the Melbourne Festival, on the Sidney Myer Music Bowl stage.”

HOT HOUSE

While An Act of Now was an ambitious piece with some lofty theatrical concepts, the lighting design was kept relatively simple. Pajanti’s use of many different types of lights reinforced the themes of the piece and was achieved not by the traditional method of rigging fixtures of the same type and gelling or colour mixing, but by using a selection of lamp types with a wide range of colour temperatures and colour spectra.

The molefay eight-ways gave off an amberwhite light and emitted a large amount of heat, which gave the house the appearance of

Going out there was like being in an episode of Weeds.

— Nik Pajanti

a giant smoky microwave oven with the light on. The QI lamps lent the set an industrial feel and the cool white LEDs mounted in the floor’s perimeter transformed it into a stark space and ultimately played a role in bringing the show to a close.

The low-pressure sodium-vapour ‘grow’ lamps cast an amber glow. When combined with smoke, they created a murky, claustrophobic ambiance, which worked in contrast to the harsh, clinical white light of the metal halide lamps. “The fun thing with using these last two types of lamps in a theatrical context is watching the colour shifts that occur as the lamps heat up,” Pajanti said. He also made use of the flickering of the lamps as they heated up, which conveyed an air of unsettledness.

The functional innovation didn’t stop with the lights. The wireless headphones enabled all

audience members to experience the subtleties of Marcel Wierckx’s composition and sound design. The interior of the house was wired for sound so the audience was able to hear the breaths and footfalls of the dancers, and the sound of their bodies as they threw themselves against the walls. The sound design was also synced via MIDI to the lighting console, an ETC Ion 2000 with 2 x 10 fader wing.

Two Martin Magnum 1800 smoke machines were ducted into the glass house and a custom exhaust system was installed – this was designed by production manager Michael Carr under guidance from the grow shop staff, and could clear the house of smoke in less than five seconds. A battery-powered smoke machine (Look Solution Tiny Power Fogger) was employed to enhance the silhouette of the solitary backlit figure.

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An Act of Now was an ambitious and exciting dance piece – and its staging, lighting and sound design met it each step of the way. By handling the lighting of this show with care and subtlety rather than assaulting the audience’s senses with truck-loads of the latest technology, Chunky Move achieved an ethereal and provocative effect. They may have employed a small number of fixtures, but in opting to use a wide variety of lights to maximum effect and including a clever ‘grass-roots’ alternative to standard equipment, the visionary design assisted in adding another character to the performance – the house itself.

MOTLEY CUES The road to glory is paved with metal.

Text: Cat Strom

I

n 1980 at the impressionable age of 15, Sean ‘Motley’ Hackett went to see Kiss perform live and at that moment decided he was going to be a lighting designer. Fast-forward 33 years and he is touring the world – as Kiss’s LD. “I was so overwhelmed by the whole show and the production,” he recalls. “I wanted to be part of making that magic. I believe that I have got to where I am now because I’ve always been passionate about lighting.”

Perseverance, hard work and being in the right place at the right time have also played their parts.

Back then, Motley was living in Canberra where he began to work for local cover bands before seeking out a company that hired stagehands and doing load-ins and bump-outs. He kept seeing road cases with ‘Jands’ stencilled on them, and that began a six-month campaign of hounding them for a job in lighting. It paid off: he got a week of factory work at Jands Production Services, arrived early and stayed late, sweeping floors and pulling cables looms apart. His eagerness was noted and within three months he was out on tour with acts such as Jackson Brown, The Eurhythmics and INXS. It was around this time he picked up his nickname thanks to a Mötley Crüe t-shirt he was wearing: “The crew just started calling me Motley. Two years later I walked into Jands and someone said, ‘Hey, there’s that heavy metal kid Motley from Canberra’…”

LONG WAY TO THE TOP

After a couple of years he bought a one-way ticket to London and went to seek his fortune, securing a job with Vari-Lite Europe touring with the likes of Bon Jovi and George Michael. A trip back home saw him take up the job of lighting designer for Noiseworks, then Diesel, INXS and Savage Garden, which meant he still got to travel overseas but could base himself at home.

Between tours Motley worked as crew chief for Jands, Bytecraft (later acquired by the Production Resources Group) and then PRG, where he was crew chief for Kiss in 2001. In 2007 when Kiss rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley did a solo tour, Kiss’s lighting designer wasn’t available and Motley was asked to step in. At the end of that tour he landed four US Kiss gigs, and went on to be crew chief for a longer tour. Half way through the European leg Kiss’s LD left and Motley stepped in. By 2009 he was officially the band’s LD. Kiss organised a three-year US work visa for him, which has just been renewed until 2015.

“It’s all about being in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge,” he says. “You have to try to always be out there and be involved in it all. When you’re starting out, working as a loader is one of the best things you can do because you get your hands on the equipment. But in the afternoon try meet the lighting guys and ask if you can hang out with them and learn. Gently push yourself in.

As you progress take any lighting work that is offered: light the support band or do some stupid corporate show. Just be the keenest person you can. It is good to do courses but the only course I’ve ever done is a rigging ticket and I’ve never had to use it for income, but it is good to know – especially since we hang heavy things above people’s heads!”

CHEAP TRICKS

Motley also points to the amount of console software available for download as being great for learning. “There are also cheap CAD drawing programs you can use to start learning the logic of scale drawing, there are a lot of books around that explain lighting and the internet is a great place for info,” he says.

Recently he lit a Lenny Kravitz set at Rock in Rio after programming the entire show on MA PC and MA 3D. “I had the lighting plot sent to me and spent a week at home building it cue by cue, so I had the whole show ready to go as soon as I got there,” he says. “However, as Rocky McKenzie [legendary Australian LD – Ed] said to me once, ‘You’re never going to be a moving light programmer unless you can make 16 parcans look good for two hours’.”

When asked about Australia’s production lighting industry, Motley says that nowhere else in the world tours like us. Tours last 10 to 12 weeks in the US and Europe so the lighting equipment is hired out for a long time.

Top: Sean Hackett with his ticket to a Kiss concert.

Bottom: Kiss LD Motley Hackett with the band.

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Photo: Troy Constable

Take any lighting work that is offered: light the support band or do some stupid corporate show. Just be the keenest person you can.

— Sean ‘Motley’ Hackett

Photo: Cat Strom

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First and foremost it’s about the band _ the four superheroes on stage.

— Sean ‘Motley’ Hackett

wouldn’t work,” Motley says. “In some ways it still looks like a massive parcan show but now we have fixtures like the Vari-Lite VL3500 which are brighter than any followspot that was around in the ‘80s. Also, in the ‘80s the Kiss sign was a bunch of PAR36 bubbles in a frame – now it’s 1100 MR16 75W bubbles that rip your face off when we turn it on! There’s enough power in that sign to light a local street. There is also a large video element now. The younger people seeing this show think they are seeing a modernised version of what it was in the old days but in fact it’s quite a radical change whilst still a classic Kiss show.”

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Photo: Cat Strom

The Kiss Monster Tour 2013 features Vari-Light VL3500 washes, Clay Paky Sharpys, Martin Atomic strobes, Coemar LED PARs, Martin MAC101s and an assortment of audience blinders, but only 12 PAR64 cans.

“I see the Sharpys as a modern day version of the ACL (aircraft landing light) beam except now I can have fans of colour or fans that move,” Motley says. “But again, it’s all very simple because there is so much for your brain to “Because of the exchange rate our wages are process on this show. The light show is one thing high, our fuel is expensive and the distances but then there’s the band on the video screen, the between gigs are very long, but our tours are very short,” he says. “Plus the gear has lots of tariffs and screen content, the pyrotechnics and of course the band doing all their manoeuvres with all their taxes on it. Then when we put together a tour like Kiss, the amount of time it takes to prep for a two- makeup and costumes. First and foremost it’s about the band – the four superheroes on stage, week Australian tour is the same as a 12-week US which is why for 95 per cent of the show, the tour. The profit margins are very tight. band is lit in white spotlights so they stand out.

“As we say in the industry – the Americans People have come to see the band with a light throw money and labour at it, the British try to show around them and if the light show gets too work out how to do it with the latest technology, the Australians do it with what they have available complex, you just miss the point.”

Motley tends to lay a show out and operate and the New Zealanders try to manufacture it manually; every time you see the lights flash something to make it work.” it’s him pressing a button as it’s all part of the Motley’s lighting for Kiss is constantly evolving, challenge and the fun doing it the old school way. from his early days with the band when the light “One of my followspot operators commented show was linear with seven straight trusses, to the other day that it was obvious I was manually today’s show which has straight trusses rigged operating the show because no one could at angles with chain motors enabling a variety of programme that many cues to be that tight in a configurations. song,” he says.

Having achieved his dream several years ago, SONGS REMAIN THE SAME being happily married and with his mortgage “The foundation programming of this show goes paid off, Motley now wants to share his back to 2009. Every time I do a tour I bend it a knowledge to improve the radically changing little bit,” he explains. “That’s the beauty of the Australian music industry. modern lighting control console; you can easily “When I started in this business we were a change fixture types in your console and clone bunch of crazy cowboys who worked our asses information from one light to another light. I can off but now OH&S is a big part of our industry,” simply change things in MA 3D; the cues are he says. “I’m not as fit as I used to be, and my always the same but look slightly different. I may enthusiasm for dealing with difficult LDs who change whole songs but the same cues remain can’t set up the rig they designed has worn a bit as the song structure does not change. It’s an thin so I think my crew chief days are coming to evolution, we don’t ever start from scratch.”

However there are certain aspects of a Kiss show an end.

“I’m happy to keep doing Kiss for as long that are classic: the mirror ball in Black Diamonds, as they keep going or they get bored of me – the green floor parcan look of Gene Simmons spitting blood, the police beacons when he breathes whichever one comes first! I don’t take this job for granted. It’s nice to be at the top of the mountain, fire - all of which have been on every Kiss show the trick now is getting down to a green valley since the mid-‘70s. without falling.”

“Going for a radical change with Kiss just

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LUXIM’S LIGHT EMITTING PLASMA It’s a discharge lamp, but not as we know it.

Text: Andy Ciddor

A

lthough we’re constantly being bombarded with the message that the solidstate light emitting diode is the greatest advance in lighting since our sun’s photosphere kicked into action about 4.5 billion years ago, there are still innovations aplenty being wrought in many other types of sources.

Of particular interest is the Light Emitting Plasma (LEP) source from the LUXIM Corporation in the USA’s Silicon Valley. While the name ‘plasma’ is being bandied about to draw attention to the fact that this isn’t a solid state source, it’s likely to cause some confusion because virtually every electric lamp that doesn’t produce its light from a glowing filament involves the production of plasma.

LUXIM: www.luxim.com Hive Lighting: www.hivelighting.com Distributed in Australia by MACS Camera, Film and Television Production Supplies: 1300 539 808 or macsimage.com.au

around since demonstrations of the principle by Nikolai Tesla in the late nineteenth century.

A modern, high output electrode-less lamp was developed in the early 1990s by Fusion Lighting in the US. This now-abandoned technology used a cavity magnetron, similar to those found in domestic microwave ovens, to create plasma from powdered sulphur contained in a golf ball-sized quartz glass envelope. While being very energy efficient – approximately 100lm/W (lumens per watt) – the sulphur lamp had serious drawbacks.

It was only available in very high output versions starting at about 150,000 lumens, which, while great for searchlights, doesn’t have a lot of applications for general commercial, industrial or domestic lighting. The sulphur lamp’s other big problem was GETTING IN A STATE that the magnetron operated at 2.45GHz – bang in Plasma is the most active state of matter. The solid the middle of the wireless spectrum used by everyform is the least energetic and as a rule, the most thing from cordless phones and AV extenders to stable state of matter, but if you add sufficient wi-fi Ethernet – and it took a lot of work to stop all energy to a solid it will usually melt into the liquid that radio frequency (RF) energy from leaking out state. If you keep adding energy to the liquid form into the environment. of a material, it generally vaporises into the much LUXIM’s development of the technology it’s more energetic gaseous state. When you add even released as LEP is a progression from the sulphur more energy to the gaseous form of a material, it lamp, in that it too uses RF energy to produce loses its grip on some of its electrons and becomes the plasma in its source, although in this case at conductive plasma. The usual method for creating 440MHz. LUXIM’s lamp consists of a tic-tac-sized plasma is to put a pair of electrodes into container quartz glass envelope filled with an inert gas toof a gas then pass a spark between them to energether with small amounts of mercury and a mix of gise the gas. metal halide salts. The envelope is partially embedThe metal-halide discharge lamps we use every ded in a puck of ceramic materials that contains day contain an inert gas, small amounts of mercury the RF emitters, waveguides and feedback sensors and the halide salts of metals. The inert gas is to produce and control the excitation of the plasma. arced into conduction and driven into its plasma Unlike the sulphur lamp, the RF emissions from the form by a high-energy pulse being passed between LEP are relatively easily manageable in the design a pair of tungsten electrodes. This in turn heats the of the reflector and fixture design process. mercury and metal halide salts until they become bright, light-emitting plasma.

SMARTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE LAMP The requirement for electrodes in a lamp brings A critical component of the LEP lamp is the elecwith it a range of problems. The high energy start tronics system that generates the RF energy and pulses cause some vaporisation of the electrode monitors the status of the lamp as it goes through material. This can lead to blackening of the transstart up and re-strike sequences, and maintains the parent envelope of the lamp, which reduces its light stability of the plasma column during continuous output. Also, as the electrodes erode from vaporisa- operation. The early versions of the control election, the gap between them increases, necessitating tronics contained some 200 discrete components, a progressively higher energy pulse to bridge the but LUXIM has very recently upgraded to an gap and start plasma production. In addition, the IBM-designed, hybrid ASIC (application specific electrodes also act as heatsinks, carrying away integrated circuit) that incorporates all signal some of the energy from the lamp that might othconditioning, digital processing, RF and high volterwise have been used to keep the plasma hot and age circuitry required to drive the lamp’s systems. glowing. Add to this the problems associated with As a bonus, this control system allows the lamp getting electrical power through the envelope mato be very rapidly and smoothly dimmed between terial and into the electrodes while not letting the 20% and 100% of light output, with little shift in high pressure gasses escape, and you have another colour temperature between 100% and 50%. The set of places for degradation of lamp performance system also sports a serial data link that enables it and eventual failure. to communicate with the outside world about everything from its health and operational status, to LOOK MUM, NO WIRES DMX and DALI control messages and the current If you could create the plasma without needing leaders of the footy tipping competition. It can also electrodes, you immediately increase both the opbe controlled by a 1 to 10V analogue control signal erational life and the efficiency of the process. The for compatibility with older control equipment. The idea of electrode-less plasma production has been reduction in the size of the electronics brought 34

FEATURE

054

Luxim’s LIFI plasma lamps This latest generation of electrode-less plasma lamps will give the LED a run for its money Text:/ Andy Ciddor

Robe’s release of the Robin 3 Plasma moving-head spot at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt earlier this year has sparked a surge of interest in the revolutionary new plasma lamp that powers this luminaire. (See our news pages for more about the Robin.) While the name ‘plasma’ is being bandied about

by Robe to draw attention to the use of the Luxim Corporation’s LIFI lamp, it’s likely to cause some confusion, because virtually every electric lamp that doesn’t produce its light from a glowing filament involves the production of plasma.

Plasma is the most active state of matter.

The solid form is the least energetic and as a rule, the most stable state of matter, but if you add sufficient energy to a solid it will usually melt into the liquid state. If you keep adding energy to the liquid form of a material, it generally vaporises into the much more energetic gaseous state. When you add even more energy to the gaseous form of a material, it loses its grip on some of its electrons and becomes conductive plasma. The usual method for creating plasma is to put a pair of electrodes into container of a gas then pass a spark between them to energise the gas.

The metal-halide discharge lamps we use every day contain an inert gas and small amounts of mercury and the halide salts of metals. The inert gas is arced into conduction and its plasma form by a high-energy pulse being passed between the tungsten electrodes.

This in turn heats the mercury and metal was developed in the early 1990s by Fusion halide salts until they become bright, light- Lighting in the US. This now-abandoned emitting plasma. technology used a cavity magnetron, similar The requirement for electrodes in a lamp to those found in domestic microwave ovens, brings with it a range of problems. The high to create plasma from powdered sulphur energy start pulses cause some vaporisation contained in a golf ball-sized quartz glass of the electrode material. This can lead to envelope. While being very energy efficient blackening of the transparent envelope of the – 100 lm/W (lumens per Watt) – the sulphur lamp which reduces its light output. Also, as lamp had serious drawbacks. It was only the electrodes erode from vaporisation, the available in very high output versions starting gap between them increases, necessitating a at about 150,000 lumens, which, while progressively higher energy pulse to bridge great for searchlights, doesn’t have a lot of the gap and start plasma production. In applications for general commercial, industrial addition, the electrodes also act as heatsinks, or domestic lighting. The sulphur lamp’s other carrying away some of the energy from the big problem was that it operated at 2.45GHz lamp that might otherwise have been used – bang in the middle Bulb of the wireless spectrum Conductive to keep the plasma hot and glowing. Add used by everything from cordless phones Ceramic Puck Coating to this the problems associated with getting and AV extenders to WiFi Ethernet – and electrical power through the envelope material it took a lot of work to stop all that Radio and into the electrodes while not letting the Frequency (RF) energy from leaking out into high pressure gasses escape, and you have the environment . another set of places for degradation of lamp Luxim’s development of the technology performance and eventual failure. they’ve released as LIFI is a progression from sulphurAbove lamp, inRF-shielded that it too RF energy Feedback Top: Test LEP high-mast fixtures at the Port of Oakland,the California right: LEPuses electronics module connected to a LOOK MUM, NO WIRES Power Input Antenna produceheatsinked the plasma in its via source, although really stands out from the high-pressure sodium crowd.to Amplifier lamp module a heavily RF-screened cable assembly.

Antenna If you could create thequartz-glass plasma without in this case at left: 900MHz, vicinity of Above left: LEP capsule. needing Below How an LEPin lampthe works.

1) Amplifier feedback circuit establishes electric field electrodes,Above: then immediately increase Luxim’s lamp consists a during operation.

Hive you Lighting’s Killer Plasma 4-light Maxi based mobile around phones.

Below right: The ⇒ thermodynamics of an LEPof capsule Purple glow emission 2) Field ionizes gas and creates plasma both the the operational and the ofefficiency tic-tac-sized quartz glass envelope filled with ENT-31-02 LEPlife source.

1.08kW LEP beats 2.5kW of HMI 3) Plasma vaporizes the salts ⇒ Blue light emission of the process. ideato of electrode-less small amounts and remainsThe flicker-free 2254)million fps.the plasma an inert gas together⇒ with Salts join Powerful white light emission plasma production has been around since of mercury and a mix of metal halide salts. demonstrations of the principle by Nikolai The envelope is partially embedded in a puck Tesla in the late nineteenth century. of ceramic materials that contains the RF A modern, high output electrode-less lamp emitters, waveguides and feedback sensors to 1250 K 1100 K

Bulb Conductive Coating

Halide salt pool

Feedback Antenna

Amplifier

Power Input Antenna

1) Amplifier feedback circuit establishes electric field 2) Field ionizes gas and creates plasma 3) Plasma vaporizes the salts 4) Salts join the plasma

⇒ Purple glow emission ⇒ Blue light emission ⇒ Powerful white light emission 35

SiO2

6000 K

Ceramic Puck

P in

Left: How a LIFI lamp works.

Above: Thermodynamics of the LIFI lamp capsule during operation.

Right: A complete LIFI lamp, showing the capsule embedded in the ceramic puck and the surrounding heatsink.

about by the move to the ASIC means that the new higher-powered lamps coming into production can fit in the same footprint as the original lamps.

Not only does the electrode-less design permit higher efficiencies, it also allows lamp life to extend to tens of thousands of hours before significant output reduction, and several times that before lamp failure. Lamp efficiencies in the LEP range vary from 60lm/W to around 100lm/W (about double that of metal halides). Operational life (L70) ranges from 10,000 to 50,000 hours, depending on the correlated colour temperature and colour rendering index (CRI). These numbers are increasing with each production model, as R&D is continuing to improve the control system, the RF coupling, and the fill mix in the envelope.

The CRI of the LEP lamps ranges from a moderate 75 to an impressive 95, depending on the gas fill and the usual trade-off between efficiency and CRI. (See the table below.) In common with all light sources, some wavelengths are easier to produce than others, leaving the choice between a good balance of colours and moderate output, or plenty of the easy-to-make colours and their consequent over-abundance in the mix.

As with the CRI, the correlated colour temperature of an LEP lamp depends on the mix of materials used in the gas fill, with current products ranging from 5300K to 9000K. The ENT-31-02 LEP lamp used in the award-winning film and TV fixtures from Hive has a colour temperature of 5600K, a CRI of 94, an efficiency of 67lm/W and a life of 10,000 hours. The colour temperature change for this lamp is a fairly gentle increase (blue shift) of approximately 0.08K per hour, or 800K during its long life. This is sufficiently significant to require periodic colour temperature corrections where the output is being used for photographic or video applications, or where there are lamps of radically different ages in the rig. According to LUXIM’s engineers, it is possible to adjust the correlated colour temperature of an LEP lamp by a few hundred Kelvins, by modifying the amplitude of the RF excitation via the lamp’s data link.

Being on a much smaller scale than the sulphur lamp, LUXIM’s LEP lamps produce light in quantities that are useful for commercial, street lighting, plant growing, instrumentation and architectural purposes, including some projection and entertainment applications. LUXIM’s first commercial products a few years ago were in the 170W region, but its current offerings range up to 500W with a light output of 45,000lm (the equivalent of 750W of metal halide). Outputs are set to increase up to an impressive 1kW in future products.

The LEP lamp fills the need for a very compact, long-life, high-efficiency, high-CRI light source at a density, light output and efficiency that may never be met by LEDs. Electrode-less plasma discharge technology deserves a top position on your list of technologies to watch.

the electrode-less design... allows lamp life to extend to tens of thousands of hours

Above: Spectral distribution for ENT-31-02 Below: Comparison of some different versions of the LEP lamp

Lamp

STA-25-03 INT-30-02

INT-30-03

INT-30-04

ENT-31-02

STA-40-01 STA-40-01 STA-41-01 STA-41-02 STA-75-01

Lumens 12,000

2260

1950

2800

17,800

16,000

14,000

23,000

17,000

45,000

CCT

5200K

6400K

7650K

6500K

5300

6000K

5300K

5200K

5200K

5200K

CRI

75

95

95

95

94

80

94

75

95

75

Life

50,000

10,000

10,000

10,000

10,000

30,000

30,000

50,000

30,000

50,000

Voltage 24

28

28

28

28

28

28

28

28

28

Amps

6.3

8.5

8.5

8.5

9.5

9.2

9.2

9.2

9.2

12.5

Power

160W

238W

238W

238W

266W

258W

258W

258W

258W

375W

Usage

General

Instrument

Instrument

Instrument

Entertainment Growing

Growing

General

General

High mast

36

ALL CHANGE HERE FOR THE FUTURE Lighting Council Australia’s Owen Manley keeps a watchful eye on the timetable.

Text: Owen Manley

U

rgent: You need to consider your involvement in SPARC as it’s here and now.

Fortunately, reading the other end of L+D will resolve this.

Important: You need to address the ERAC electrical safety and ACMA electromagnetic compatibility changes promptly. Fortunately, reading below will kick start this.

The difference? It’s only a matter of time before the important become urgent and the clock has already started.

March 1st 2013 saw the culmination of five years of industry and regulator cooperation with the implementation of a number of important initiatives that affect all electrical equipment suppliers in Australia and New Zealand to some degree.

For instance, all applicable new suppliers and equipment placed on the market since 1 March must comply with new safety, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and marking requirements. Existing suppliers and equipment have various transition arrangements with durations that vary from six months to five years.

quency range tests shown in AS/NZS CISPR 15, IEC CISPR 15 or EN 55015, ended. It is now mandatory for all new equipment, associated suppliers declarations, test reports, etc. to show compliance from 9kHz to 300MHz. Equipment using switch-mode power supplies such as electronic transformers, ballasts, LED lamps, LED drivers etc. are especially affected.

Rules, guidelines and transition information is available at www.acma.gov.au Compliance marking

Both regulatory schemes use the RCM as a common compliance mark (shown here).

• a self-funded, user-pays system where regis- All pre-1 March compliance marks such as the tration fees fund improved compliance, surveil- various state safety marks, Qxxx, Vxxx, Nxxx and C-tick, will be phased out. This will greatly lance and post-market enforcement activities; simplify equipment compliance recognition and, • registration of ‘Responsible Suppliers’, who coupled with the publically accessible database, are manufacturers or importers of in-scope improve traceability of suppliers. electrical equipment, are legal entities, and The RCM is a registered trademark of have the onus of responsibility for ensuring the Electrical Safety Regulators and ACMA. Rules safety of the electrical equipment they sell; for using the RCM are set out in the AS/NZS • combine and simplify the equipment mark4417:2012 standards. ing requirements of two regulatory schemes ERAC EESS Implementation and transition (ERAC and ACMA) by using a consistent, Electrical safety recognised mark, i.e. the Regulatory Compliance arrangements for each jurisdiction are: The Electrical Regulatory Authorities Council • Queensland – in general, from 1 March 2013 Mark (RCM) on all applicable equipment.

(ERAC) is the peak body of electrical safety there is up to a: The technical safety requirements have not regulators in Australia and New Zealand. ERAC changed under the EESS, but tighter evidence # six-month transition period for Responimplemented the Electrical Equipment Safety of conformity and different marking is required sible Suppliers to register on the national public Scheme (EESS) for applicable in-scope [see access database, declare all equipment safe and for some items. box – Ed] electrical equipment on 1 March in The new rules, transition information and the pay the registration fee of $200; Queensland. This heralds a fundamental change guide Manufacturers and Importers, Suppliers # six-month period for Responsible Supto the electrical safety landscape. Suppliers pliers to register Level 3 in-scope electrical and Retailers of Electrical Equipment which will be required to register their details on a equipment; relates to supplying safe electrical equipment national database. As part of the registration # three-year period for equipment manucan be found at the ERAC website: www.erac. process, suppliers must make a declaration factured in Australia or imported, to be marked gov.au that all the equipment they sell meets relevant with the RCM by the Responsible Supplier; Australian Communication and Media standards and is electrically safe. For some # five-year period for equipment to be Authority (ACMA) equipment, evidence of compliance is required ACMA also introduced its compliance chang- sold at retail level before the RCM must be and is graded, based on risk. added to the equipment. es on 1 March 2013 with supplier registration While the new requirements are not yet na• South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, and equipment marking aligned with those of tionally consistent, the intention is to introduce the ERAC EESS. The ACMA supplier’s declara- Northern Territory, Tasmania and Australian the scheme throughout Australia and New Zea- tion and evidence of compliance requirements Capital Territory jurisdictions have signed land by having: the regulatory impact statement but not yet for EMC have not changed, but all companies • nationally consistent, electrical equipment completed their legislative process to enact supplying EMC generating equipment are now safety legislation that will greatly increase con- to be registered on the same national database. the EESS. Once the jurisdiction implements sumer safety; their legislation, transition arrangements will ACMA registration has no associated fee. New • a national, publically accessible database be confirmed. These are expected to align with equipment is to be marked with the RCM from where all suppliers, brands and certain types of 1 March 2013 with a three-year transition pethe end of the periods above, measured from 1 equipment are registered prior to being offered riod for existing marking. All equipment is to be March. for sale, thus allowing equipment to be easily • Presently NSW does not support the scheme RCM marked by 1 March 2016. traced to its supplier; and is not participating. For NSW requirements Independently of this, ACMA has changed • risk-based classification of equipment where the technical requirements for EMC compliance see www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au and the guidLevel 3 is high risk, Level 2 is medium and ance below. of applicable lighting equipment. On 9 FebruLevel 1 is low risk, with different requirements • New Zealand indicates it will have compleary 2013, the two-year voluntary compliance for each; mentary legislation and processes to the EESS phase-in period introducing the extended fre38

so recognition issues between EESS participating jurisdictions and NZ are expected to be minimal. These are not covered here.

The legislative requirements for sale of electrical equipment that apply in each jurisdiction prior to 1 March 2013 will remain in place until that jurisdiction implements the EESS legislation. During the intervening period, participating jurisdictions will accept the RCM as the approval mark for any certificate issued so long as the requirements of AS/NZS 4417.1:2012 are met (i.e. Responsible Supplier and any EESS defined Level 3 in-scope electrical equipment is registered on national database).

NSW requirements

The NSW Office of Fair Trading should be contacted to confirm its recognition arrangements; however, it is understood that NSW has not changed its requirements. The requirements for sale of declared electrical equipment in NSW – a certificate for the declared electrical equipment, and the equipment being marked with the required approval mark – will continue to apply.

NSW will recognise an EESS participating jurisdiction (regulator) issued certificate for equipment and the equipment marked with the RCM, in accordance with AS/NZS 4417.1:2012, as meeting the certification and approval marking requirements for sale of declared equipment in NSW. NSW will not prohibit the sale of nondeclared electrical equipment with the RCM marked on the equipment even if it does not have a certificate issued by a regulator (as

required by AS/NZS 4417.1:2009), where the RCM is marked in accordance with AS/NZS 4417.1:2012.

The NSW regulator and NSW REAS will no longer issue certificates that indicate an approved alternate approval mark is the RCM unless the RCM is applied in accordance with AS/ NZS 4417.1:2012.

Certificates issued by NSW or under a NSW Recognised Equipment Scheme (NSW REAS) on equipment that is Level 3 in the EESS that is registered on the national certification database, will be deemed certificates of conformity for the purposes of the EESS. A registered Responsible Supplier will be able to register Level 3 electrical equipment with NSW or with NSW REAS certificates and apply the RCM in accordance with AS/ NZS 4417.1:2012 for sale of the equipment in an EESS participating jurisdiction. Certificates issued by a NSW REAS on Level 3 equipment in the EESS that is registered on the national certification database, will be deemed certificates of conformity.

However, NSW REAS are for Level 3 certificates of conformity only and NSW REAS will only be recognised through the EESS until 1 March 2014. After this time, if they have not been accepted as a recognising external certification schemes (RECS), they will cease to have recognition in the EESS. The EESS has a process for RECS for certifiers that are not regulators (private certifiers).

ILS

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Scoping it out

In-Scope Electrical Equipment is electrical equipment rated to operate between 50V AC RMS or 120V ripple-free DC (extra-low voltage) and 1000V AC RMS or 1500V ripple-free DC (high voltage), and it must be designed or marketed as suitable for household, personal or similar use as determined by the regulator.

There is no Level 2 in-scope electrical equipment as at 1 March 2013 and so there are no transitional requirements for Level 2 in-scope electrical equipment.

Post-market surveillance includes audits and investigations conducted by regulators, as well as coordinated check test programs for either targeted or randomly chosen equipment in the market place. Significant penalties can apply as a result of breaching legislative requirements.

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For more product information or to find your nearest stockist, please visit our website www.dialight.com.au

LIGHTING FAMILY NEWS News from the industry associations that make up the lighting community

ALIA Australian Commercial & Entertainment Technology Association (ACETA)

The Australian Commercial & Entertainment Technologies Association held its Annual General Meeting on May 1, and it was clear how much has been achieved in its relatively short life. ACETA began in 2011, driven by the overwhelming view in the sector that there were too many trade shows. Once the association had been set up a survey of the industry was undertaken, a white paper was drafted and a cross-sector roundtable held – and out of that ACETA has partnered with ETF for ENTECH 2013 as part of the ACETA-owned Australian Entertainment Technology Week. Very quickly it also became apparent there were a number of issues that only an industry association could address. These include establishing clear industry guidelines and standards of operation for members that can be used as evidence of ethical trading to customers, the development of industry statistics, addressing the skills gap, the manufacturers’ manifesto to raise awareness of and support for Australian manufacturing, and taking on the responsibility for AWAG, the industry group working to represent the interests of the users, distributors and manufacturers of wireless audio products when Australia transitions to digital.

At a brief board meeting following the AGM, Frank Hinton of ATT Audio Controls was re-elected as president, Frank Andrewartha from Quest Technologies was re-elected as secretary, and Tony Hambling from Murray Tregonning was voted in as the new treasurer. A vote of thanks was made to Steve Devine of Meyer Sound for serving as treasurer for two years.

Paul Mulholland of Jands is leading the industry statistics project, which will commence shortly with the microphone and loudspeaker categories. Also coming soon: the ACETA Forum to present education programs either at an event or in hard copy.

Australasian Lighting Industry Association (ALIA)

The best place to keep up with ALIA is our web site at alia.com.au, where news about ALIA’s activities including our backstage tours and lighting in Australia is posted every working day.

Our next big public outing is the combined Entech / SMPTE show at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour 23rd to 26th of July (Entech only runs until the 25th). On the first evening of this show we’ll be holding our annual general meeting, which provides an opportunity for members to talk to our governing committee and more importantly, the chance to stand for election to the committee and participate in setting the future directions of ALIA. We’ll also have our usual Entech stand as a meeting point for the lighting community and an information point for anyone wanting to know more about lighting as both an interest and a career. There will always be someone on the stand who can either answer your questions or whistle up (well, phone up really) someone from the lighting community on the show floor who can.

ALIA will also be running its well-known Lighting 101 series of seminars that offer insights into the art of lighting, the technology of lighting and the process of lighting design. We’ll have our regular expert session on the changing state of play in the area of equipment testing and tagging, and we’ll also be participating in presenting the new Lighting Technician’s Lunch, a programme tailored specifically for lighting techs, covering the real problems they face in getting productions up and running and then keeping them running.

See you at Entech and SMPTE. ALIA: www.alia.com.au

ACETA: www.aceta.org.au

40

Lighting Council Australia (LCA)

SPARC International Lighting Event 2013 (Sydney, 4-6 June) has been the major activity for Lighting Council Australia in recent weeks. Planning is proceeding well, led by a hard working organising committee of representatives from LCA, IES and IALD. At the time of writing, six weeks out, all exhibition spaces were sold and the speaker program, featuring well-known international and local speakers, complete.

It is an exciting time for the world’s lighting industry as we begin the transformation from predominantly incandescent and fluorescent technology to solid-state lighting. Once dominated by Europe and the US, a global shift is occurring in light source technology to the electronic powerhouses of Asia. As is wellknown in the industry – but not so well-known among customers – not all LEDs are created equal. Quality problems and overstatement of performance remain a significant problem and threaten to undermine the uptake of this important technology. LCA is addressing these issues by active participation in LED standardisation both within Australia and internationally. In addition we have introduced a certification program for LEDs known as the SSL Quality Scheme. The certification scheme provides confidence to customers that product carrying the SSL Quality Scheme label matches the claims made about it in the critical areas of light output, colour and power consumption.

LCA: www.lightingcouncil.com.au

International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD)

Professional lighting designers are a tremendous resource for innovative, practical and economically viable lighting solutions. They understand the role of lighting in architecture and interior design, and rely on their extensive experience and knowledge of lighting equipment and systems to enhance and strengthen designs.

A professional lighting designer: Meets the needs of the people who use the space.

Selects cost-effective and energyefficient products most appropriate for the project.

Creates an innovative lighting solution that achieves the perfect balance of function and aesthetics.

Solves the unique lighting challenges of a wide range of interior and exterior environments.

Strengthens and enhances any space through creative yet functional lighting plans.

Professional lighting designers, by dint of their training, experience and everyday practice, are able to benefit the community by applying their expertise in the following ways:

and the United Kingdom. We are also able to bring this internal network to bear to provide best practice guidance to energy standards in Australia.

Many professional lighting designers are also Green Star accredited and active within this space for project work, as an increasing majority of projects must meet strict sustainability targets.

Through our detailed professional knowledge of products and technology, we are able to exploit advances that support sustainability for the benefit of the community.

Safety Safety is not guaranteed by the simple achievement of an illumination requirement in a standard. In fact, people’s perceptions of safety are much more governed by issues such as facial recognition, contrast ratio, glare and colour discrimination, yet our standards are at present primarily governed by ground plane illuminance.

Professional lighting designers are concerned with the holistic use of light, rather than light levels on the walking surface. By good design, we are more likely to achieve a safe design solution than the mere distribution of light across the ground, to the benefit of all.

Amenity New studies show the quality of light affects people in many different ways. For example, office worker satisfaction and productivity can be positively affected by well-designed illumination.

Building owners and managers have the potential to add value, reduce costs and enhance performance through the application of good lighting. It’s no secret that people are attracted to well-lit public facilities, commercial shopping districts and parks.

Good lighting enhances the mood and desirability of these spaces. It contributes greatly to people’s sense of wellbeing. Many of the current efforts to attract people to downtown areas after dark are being spearheaded by professional lighting designers.

Sustainability Professional lighting designers are actively engaged in the preparation and review of energy standards as related to lighting, particularly in North America

Illuminating Engineering Society of Australia and New Zealand (IES ANZ)

SPARC 2013 is just around the corner. We are encouraging all IES members to attend this fantastic event. An enormous amount of work has gone into its preparation and the result will be truly spectacular!

We are also encouraging our members to attend the industry’s awards event immediately following SPARC on Friday 7 June from 12.30pm to 2.30pm. These are the Lighting Design Awards (LiDA) and Luminaire Design Awards (LuDA). Members will be advised separately of full details.

LiDA candidates for Supreme Brilliance (Lighting Project of the Year):

Health Professional lighting designers are actively involved in research pertaining to the effects of light on health, and in many instances are at the forefront of research into the use of light to assist in healing, as well as the effect light has on circadian rhythms.

Through their internal networks, professional lighting designers have access to a wealth of current data on the effects of light on health, and are able to bring this knowledge forward for the benefit of the community.

Project Name

Designer(s)

Organisation

MONA – Theatre of the World, Hobart

Adam Meredith

Museum Exhibition Gallery Services

Cranbourne Race Track, Victoria

Richard Dubzienck, Peter Cartwright

Australian Sportsvision Consultants

New Extension – Caneland Central Shopping Centre Interior, Mackay

Michael Sparrow

Lend Lease

Brisbane Supreme Court & District Court, Brisbane

Mirjam Roos

Steensen Varming

Soul, Surfers Paradise

Tony Douthwaite

Tony Douthwaite Lighting Design

Knox Church – Panelled Ceiling, Christchurch

Kevin Cawley

Kevin Cawley Lighting Design

Rotorua Museum – Don Stafford Wing

Marc Simpson, Sarah Peachey, Adam Walker

Toulouse Group

Willinga Park Residence, Bawley Point, NSW

Lighting Design Partnership (LDP)

Commonwealth Bank Building Darling Quarter, Sydney – Illuminated Facade

Michael Sparrow

Lend Lease Design

GPT Headquarters, Level 52 MLC Centre, Sydney

Tim Carr, Jo Black

ARUP

The Bronze Box, State Theatre of WA, Perth

Paul Beale

Electrolight

Crown Metropol Perth – External Pools

Luke Ellis

BCA

Luminaire Design Awards Chapter Excellence candidates: Victoria/Tasmania Chapter Swanston Street Plasma Lantern (City of Melbourne), Crown Lobby Chandelier (Stephen Hennessey Art & Design) Queensland Chapter Tester (Jenni Gillard Architectural Lighting Designers) New South Wales Chapter Gladiator (Thorn)

IALD: www.iald.org

And the winners are…

Well, you’ll have to come along on June 7 to find out!

41

A GREATER CLARITY LSC’s lighting control solutions deserve a double take Text: Paul Collison

I

t was back in 2009 when I looked at Clarity, Australian company LSC’s lighting control solution for AV magazine. At that time Clarity was a PC/Mac based piece of software developed by OpenClear with the small ‘wing’ type hardware designed and built by LSC. Fast forward three years and Clarity is now playing with the big boys, with three impressive full-blown control system packages on offer. It’s time for another look.

I meet with Nick Denville from OpenClear, the creator and software developer for Clarity, and it’s a little like talking with a proud father about his daughter. Denville has been writing code for Clarity since 2007. He doesn’t say it but I can tell he is quietly proud of the LX600 console we play with on his dining room table. He is currently putting the finishing touches on software version two, and I get sneak peak at that while looking at the new hardware.

There are three versions of hardware: the smaller LX300, the middle of the range LX600 and the big granddaddy released just last November, the LX900. This is, of course, on top of the programing and playback wings that work with the PC/Mac version of Clarity on your computer.

From first glance the LX 600 hardware has a familiar look and feel to it. The moment I sit behind the console I’m impressed by how ergonomically comfortable it is, despite looking a little to the contrary. Within seconds I can feel myself moving freely about the board and find the gentle curve in the armrest to perfectly suit both programing and playback positions.

the main interactive display, surprised they are still being made. Denville explains the ratio suited the layout of the software and gave better use of the available real estate. I’m inclined to agree, and learn that 4:3 screens are still in wide use in many manufacturing and industrial applications. In addition to the single 17-inch display (there are two on the larger LX900), there are seven other three-inch screens that can be used as palettes or for cue lists.

This is very similar to the Hog1000 process. So for heavy programming of cue-to-cue shows, you can load these up with colour, gobo and position palettes, or if you are busking a show you can fill them with cues to execute at will. It is a very effective way of using the same space for multiple features. The user has the option to key the small hard button or directly touch the smaller screens.

CHEQUERED BUTTONS

Buttons are always a point of discussion. Many love the old ‘click’ buttons seen on just about every lighting console prior to the mid-noughties. These buttons are great because you’re sure they’ve triggered, but make an audible click no matter how gently you press them. This is less than ideal in most environments, particularly theatre. LSC has a chequered history with buttons — many lighting professionals [count me among them –Ed] weren’t too excited about those found on products like the Axiom and Atom range of consoles.

Fully aware of this, LSC undertook a long and arduous search that culminated in the designers selecting the standard Marquardt Switches Inc. (MSI) mechanism that was used for more than a decade on the LSC Atom, Minim and Maxim consoles. For HEIGHT OF DESIGN Clarity they are fitted with a custom-made clip-on I love the fact the surface has a low profile. It sits keycap and include a PCB carrying white and red only a few centimeters above the height of the table so it’s very easy to find a comfortable operat- LEDs plus a damping mechanism to give the button the right feel. ing position. This is very important for those of us Faders are the next thing on the hit list of any who spend so many waking hours behind a console. lighting programmer. The LX600 and LX900 have My one concern about the overall physical size of the console was the height of the monitor wing. On standard motorised faders that are quick and approach it seems very high but sitting behind, it’s barely audible. The feel is very fluid when raising less dominating, and the tilt of the wing allows it to and decreasing the level manually. One very cool go down to an almost horizontal position. This was feature is the fader track being lined with RGB more than likely done for transport, but it also lets LED. I know this raises images of gaudy high-rises in Beijing – at least, it does for me. However, the those in theatres with ridiculously high bio boxes soft backlit colours are used to indicate the fader’s to view the stage and still see the screens of the console. The screen has obviously been inverted to current function. Chasers are green, cue lists are red, time controllers are blue, group masters are allow the greater viewing angle of the asymmetripurple and gold, and so on. From a console operacal screen to suit the user. tor’s point of view, this is a fantastic way to help I queried the use of the 4:3 ratio touchscreen as 42

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS FROM PAUL’S 2009 REVIEW OF CLARITY ON THE PC

Courtesy of AV magazine The first thing of note is the fresh and clean interface. Every part of the software is easily accessible from the main page and broken down into tabs.

The patch, programmer, effects and so on are all accessible from here. Each tab is undockable from the main window so users with two, three or even four monitors can really open up the software and spread things around. A simple double click on a tab undocks the appropriate window. The graphic user interface (GUI) is reasonably dark – not quite as dark and high contrast as I would prefer on a dark plane at night (or more importantly, in a dark venue) but better than most, which means your computer screen will not be screamingly bright in a venue with an audience all around.

A mouse predominantly drives the software.

There are some keyboard shortcuts for many operations but I understand there are more to come.

The patch is the most intuitive and easy to use I have ever come across. Simply drag and drop each fixture for simple and quick patching of your show.

FLEXIBILITY

Denville explains that Clarity is not aimed at any one particular market: “We really tried to make software that enables easy and simple lighting control. There are parts of the software that we have specifically written for different segments of the market, but overall we are trying to keep everyone happy”. An example of this is the performance screen that almost makes busking a show viable on a laptop. It is a simple triggering grid that allows the operator to combine looks on the fly. Going a step further, you can quickly store and then recall combinations via the row masters. You also have the ability to mask different attributes for each cell. For example, in one column you can mask all but your position information and in the other you can have only colour. It’s the same cue list, just in different cells. However, you are only allowing particular parts of the list to be replayed. This is a powerful section of the software that gives the user ultimate flexibility for replaying cues.

Left: Clarity LX900 with dual 17-inch touchscreens, two banks of faders and A/B masters.

Top: LX600 with colour-coded faders in action.

Middle: Rig View screen in Icon mode.

Bottom: Rig View screen in Front View mode displaying media content.

43

Grant Watson from Strauss Productions uses his LX600 to handle the live recording of the finale to The Biggest Loser.

Try Clarity for yourself.

Download a fully-functional copy of the latest versions of Clarity for PC or MAC software plus a complete set of pre-built visualiser demo files from the LSC web site.

Pricing: PC/Mac software starts at $2000 LX consoles range from ~$20,000 to $50,000 More information: LSC Lighting Systems: (03) 9702 8000 or www.lsclighting.com

identify which fader is which. All faders on the surface are motorised, including the grand master and the longer 100mm A/B faders found on the LX900.

On the rear of the console are all the ports and connectors you would expect to see. The DMX ports are RDM compatible. There are two Ethernet ports that currently operate in parallel, so anything can go down either. One of the biggest issues with going Ethernet rather than DMX is the ‘single point of failure’ that exists no matter how much you add redundancy to the distribution network.

LSC explains that many customers had requested dual Ethernet ports so that they can run two Cat5 cables to stage, connecting to dual-redundant hubs and then to the DMX decoders. This works harmoniously with the LSC Nexus Art-Net decoders that also run dual Ethernet ports.

Curious to know more about the software, I ask Denville if the addition of the hardware changed the way he viewed Clarity, and if it changed the way he wrote the software and developed features.

He points out straight away that the console is now touchscreen-based which automatically changed things, and notes that in version two, the graphical user interface (GUI) has been modified for more intuitive and responsive interaction. These changes certainly do improve the user experience but of course also adversely affect the PC/Mac versions of the software. So the GUI now changes depending on your hardware, which the program detects on startup. If you boot up the PC/Mac version, the software sees this and gives you the preferred GUI. It should be noted that these aren’t sweeping changes to the GUI, just bigger buttons and tabs 44

that are more suited to fingers on touchscreens than mouse pointers.

POINTS OF VIEW

Rig View is the coolest addition to the software. It means you can layout your fixtures in a space that is more akin to their actual position in your system, rather than what fits in an Excel spreadsheet. Users can then directly select fixtures from this space rather than the spreadsheet. This is not a new concept and other control systems have a similar feature, but the Clarity version takes it further, allowing the images to sit in the background. So you can export an image of your lighting design in plan view and in a front view, and lay your fixtures out with visual aids such as truss and set to give the whole view context. Fixtures can be colour-coded or have different icons for ease of identification.

This takes the user experience to another level, providing views of the lighting system that make sense and allowing the user to sit in a creative visual atmosphere rather than a more textual one.

The icons also give users direct feedback of their behaviour. Colour, gobo and level information is all displayed in this view to give users a better understanding of what the lighting system is doing.

LSC and OpenClear have together done an amazing job of innovation while listening to what designers and programmers want from a sophisticated lighting control system, but Denville assures me he won’t be resting on his laurels. With new features and plans that extend well into the future, the Clarity control system continues to evolve.

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