Elation Professional Cuepix Panel™ LED matrices and Elation Colour Chorus™ LED batten wash lights were used by lighting designer Bobby Grey to light the Tripolee Stage at the multi-genre Electric Forest Festival June 25-28 in Rothbury, Michigan. Stage design for this year’s Tripolee Stage was by Heather Shaw and her team at multi-disciplinary design firm Vita Motus Design Studio (vitamotus.com), who has created innumerable ground-breaking touring stages in the past and did it again at this year’s Electric Forest.
Event co-producers Madison House and Insomniac decided to make something more out of this year’s Tripolee Stage and asked Vita Motus to bring it into a more music appropriate space while maintaining the overall look and feel of the beautiful Electric Forest setting. Vita Motus’s Future Present stage concept imagined an ancient relic built on earth by future generations erected 1000s of years in the past, an elaborate set design built around the stage line and an exceptional space for top name DJs like Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold to perform.
LD Bobby Grey took that industrial robotic set design, complete with a profile head at each end, and gave it life through dynamic lighting. “I had used both the Cuepix Panels and the Colour Chorus on the Mojave Stage at Coachella this year,” he said, “so I knew what they could do and thought they would work well on the Tripolee Stage at this year’s Electric Forest.”
Bobby used 30 Colour Chorus 72™ battens for colorful scenic uplighting, also around the DJ Booth, as well as front lighting of the set. He also ran pixel-mapped effects across them for cohesive visual looks with the rest of the lighting and video. “The color was very even and smooth and they performed well,” he said of the 6-ft long LED strips that use 3W RGBA LEDs for a broader choice of colors which Bobby also exploited to illuminate the set’s UV paint.
In a ground package on each side of the DJ booth were vertical stacks of full-color Cuepix Panels (32 total) which were used as an effect extension of the video wall. “The extra pixels that the Cuepix gives vs similar fixtures allowed me to get more pixels without using more fixtures,” Bobby stated. “Not only do they respond well but it was easy for incoming LDs to make something nice out of them.” With 25x 30-watt RGBW LEDs per panel in a 5 x 5 matrix and individual pixel control, the Cuepix Panels open up for a wide range of creative effects possibilities from color punch to flash blinder to pixel-mapped effects.
Bobby used Madrix control software to integrate the stage’s audio, video and lighting, including the Cuepix Panels, in one cohesive experience that animated the spectacular set and thrilled audiences for four days. Lighting vendor for the event was Premiere Global Production of Nashville.
Heather Shaw: Creative Director / Production Designer
Elliott Dunwody: Producer
Daniel Popper: Installation Artist / Character Builds
Natalia Segerman: Co-producer / Installation
Bobby Grey: Lighting Designer
PGP Lighting: Lighting Vendor
Photos: Adam Kaplan
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