Elation Proteus Hybrids provides the perfect canvas of light to the University of Arizona

With the help of luminaires Elation Proteus Hybrids has been installed in the parking lot of the University sensory experience design space.

Lighting installation, video and art design space transforms the car park into a beautiful immersive environment thanks to the luminaires Elation Proteus Hybrids.

The lighting design company, Lightswitch, has transformed arizona state university parking (Arizona State University – asu), located in Tempe, in a sensory experience. To make part of the exhibition was used the luminaires of Elation, including Proteus Hybrids models.

Under the name design space, the drive-thru experience featured visual design facilities from industry professionals, Hybycozo structural artists and ASU students enrolled in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Lightswitch, that redesigned the Morton Arboretum in Illinois to make it an experience drive-thru, took advantage of the knowledge acquired in this initiative for the driving adventure of a kilometer and a half, which is done through the Packard Parking Garage. Experience, described as an exploration of the duality of space above us and between us, takes passengers on an immersive journey from our world to outer space through a series of sculptural art pieces and sound installations, light and video.

Education at a live event

The design space project has allowed students to showcase their art while working on lighting skills, video and production they have learned through their studies, including how to configure the entire computer. The Director of Lightswitch, John Featherstone, who knows the University well from having collaborated in the past with Jake Pinholster, of the Department of Design and Art, led the project design team.

Featherstone has also been a guest professor at the school and has two daughters who graduated from college.. He says his motivation for the project was to give ASU art students, who were harmed by the pandemic, the opportunity to work on a live event.

“I realized that there are creative arts students who are going to graduate without having worked at live events.. That's why he decided to get this project up and running.".

A perfect canvas of light

The Lightswitch team spent two weeks with students charging, focusing and programming the project. The white structure of the car park turned out to be the perfect canvas for light with several Elation luminaires forming the core of the experience, Proteus Hybrid moving heads and lights LedLevel Q7 IP Pair, along with other automated luminaires.

The IP65 Elation Proteus Hybrid multifunctional moving head is a lighting device that the Lightswitch team is familiar with thanks to outdoor projects, how The Morton Arboretum and Rest Gardens.

In the case of design space, the units were used to illuminate the exterior of the gigantic car park structure, while roof beams pierced the night sky to define the contour of the garage. Par Level Q7 IP lights covered the roof cover with color to simulate takeoff from an otherworldly spaceport.

Video West, located in nearby Phoenix, E Intelligent Lighting Creations, of Chicago, were the companies in charge of supplying the lighting to the project.

Control de Obsidian

Lighting and video control has been done with a number of media servers and units including a NX Wing of Obsidian Control Systems. This is the complementary USB control surface of obsidian control systems' Onyx platform.

“For years we have used almost exclusively the Maxxyz controller”, comment Chris Merriman, Lightswitch designer and project lighting programmer.” In the case of design space, we use it almost exclusively for the Dylos pixel engine for pixel control of much of the experience. We control some 108 universes of pixel-mapped units, as lighting tubes and Led reeds of two meters high made to measure”.

The NX Wing provides a responsive hardware surface to handle Onyx and the Dylos integration provides an innovative set of media composition tools, effects, content and text generators, along with a variety of parameter manipulation, right in the core of any Onyx console or PC system.

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