To Infinity and BEYOND

By Lynn Schuessler

As illuminated fountains get ready to romp, a grid of more than 150 Verge Aero X1 drones, poised on the Chimes Tower lawn, rises up like a marching band in flight. Then the formation breaks. Each drone is now a single LED pixel, carrying its own program, executing its own orders, blithely unaware of its mates. And yet, like a murmuration, the drones flow from one breathtaking pattern to another.

With explosive fireworks on hold during the Longwood Reimagined project, Director of Performing Arts Tom Warner couldn’t ignore the tech explosion in popular culture, of which drone entertainment is a growing part—from halftime shows to COVID tributes to the 2020 celebration of a winning presidential campaign, practically in Longwood’s backyard.

That victory show was staged by a young hungry company called Verge Aero, which would later go on to receive Simon Cowell’s golden buzzer on America’s Got Talent: Extreme Warner reached out. And when Nils Thorjussen, one of four Verge Aero cofounders, first saw our iconic fountains against an open canvas of night sky, you might say he was Thunderstruck “I just knew we had to fly drones there!” he says. Meanwhile, Arthur Rozzi Pyrotechnics, the Ohio company responsible for Longwood’s Fireworks & Fountains Shows since 2010, recently partnered with Verge Aero, buying their design software and a fleet of drones. Cincinnati-raised Shop Manager Eric Diehl has been doing fireworks with Arthur Rozzi for 20 years … and is now finding that drones are a whole new way to have fun in the sky. But first, it starts with the soundtrack. Longwood fountain designers Nate Hart and Tim Martin know that their playlists—June’s To Infinity and Beyond and September’s Put Me In, Coach —must stand alone as fountain shows when the drones go home. They consider music, mood, lighting, color, and fountain effects, choreographing every split second on the Syncronorm computer.

Verge Aero, with input from the team at Arthur Rozzi, will build drone effects around the fountain shows. “We’re exploring new territory here,” says Thorjussen. “A drone show coordinated with fountains has never been done before.” Fountain and drone designers can share renderings—and ideas—in a cooperative and iterative process that blends singular artistic elements into “something exponentially spectacular.”

The Verge Aero Design Studio uses splines—curves made up of pieces, which can be turned at their transition points—to approximate a smooth continuous image, and then assigns drones to create the design in the sky, while ensuring the drones never collide.

The program can factor in windspeed (X1 drones can fly in winds up to 25 mph); the height of Longwood’s tallest fountain (175 feet); and the safe distance needed from viewers. And Verge Aero’s software can talk to Longwood’s Navigator system, which runs our fountain shows.

Each 2.75-pound carbon-fiber X1 drone has four propellors, four motors, and four RGBW LED lights, bright as a headlight and visible for miles. GPS provides 10 cm precision. Max flight time is about 15 minutes, limited by battery life. To accommodate Longwood’s 30-minute shows, drones will fly in separate fleets.

FAA waivers are required to allow a show pilot to fly more than one drone at a time and to fly at night without anticollision lights. Diehl says he’ll have all four of his certified drone pilots on site to fly the shows. But the thing that keeps him up at night? A geographic anomaly— if President Biden comes home for the weekend, well … Longwood’s backyard becomes presidential airspace.

A dress rehearsal is tricky, but each company can do its own testing. “Once we script a drone show, we can fly it in my backyard,” says Diehl. “My neighbors love it!” But he’s not divulging any secrets. “It’s such an immersive artform. When you see it live, your brain doesn’t even know how to process it.” For Diehl, it’s all about the illusion—and entertaining the audience. “When the crowd cheers, you know they’ve had a good time.”

The legacy and vision of Longwood Gardens has always pushed the limits of beauty and innovation, making drone shows both an inevitable fit and a delightful surprise. “In every department, it involves years of putting ideas together and making them happen,” says Warner. “It’s why we’re here, it’s what we do.”

“This industry is in its Model T era,” says Thorjussen. “Guests are lucky to be in on the start of something new. The technology and the artform are still evolving—we’ve only just begun!”