Wireless Solution Sweden AB kicked off 2007 in style at the New York Inauguration of newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer. Following the Inauguration Ceremony on New Year’s Day, a grand festival was held at The Concourse at Empire State Plaza featuring food, live music, and activities for the entire family. The event was produced by Jack Morton Worldwide.
Because The Concourse is not your typical event venue, lit only with fluorescents and some track lighting for artwork, Dark Star Lighting & Production of Vermont was sub-contracted by Atomic Pro Audio to supply lighting and production services. The goal was to add additional light, but more importantly some pizzazz to the plain cement concourse. The team began by constructing ten truss towers, rigging each with a Thomas PAR 56 at the base to wash the truss with color. ETC Source Fours were added to project colored stars onto the ceiling, and colored panels of fluorescents were added to the sides. To really maximize the effect, a Martin MAC250 Entour was added in the center of each tower to provide a slow color fade with a glass breakup in a slow mix of patterns shooting up onto the ceiling.
The biggest challenge was to provide DMX to all ten towers, which stretched 1,400 feet (425m) from end to end through the concourse. Each tower required DMX control from a High End Systems Wholehog III. Ten Wireless Solution W-DMX R-512 Indoor Receivers were used, one mounted on top of each tower, with signal sent from a W-DMX S-1 Indoor Transmitter placed at the center point of the concourse on top of a phone booth. W-DMX was provided exclusively by Dark Star. Once completed, the light towers brought dynamic color and light to an otherwise static palette.
Andrew ”Wolf” Wallace, installation specialist for Dark Star says, ”I had been told that wireless DMX had been tried in this concourse previously but would not work; I could not find out whose product was being used. W-DMX worked perfectly. The towers never lost signal, even though there were 2,000 visitors, several broadcasting stations, numerous Wi-Fi hotspots, an NYPD station, and government wireless and radio setups. We were all really impressed.”
