Kohl Children’s Museum, a cornerstone of the Chicago community, launched a dazzling holiday light show on December 4, its reception all the more triumphant for overcoming the extra hurdle of a global pandemic.
Kohlights: A Mesmertastic Holiday Lightacular is a nearly mile-long, timed-entry, 30-minute walking course with various interactive lighting displays; but this time, the installations have all been designed specifically for kids age eight and under.
Hailey Featherstone of Lightswitch created the mesmerizing lighting design. “One of the comments we hear from the NextGen holiday lights shows that are happening in the Chicago area is that they are not necessarily targeted at engaging younger kids,” notes Featherstone. “I think sometimes we forget that some elements can be overstimulating for little kids. This experience is really about exploring rather than being presented a vista.”
To create an interactive experience, without touching surfaces to maintain COVID-19 health and safety regulations, every participant receives a six-inch glowstick. Wielding this tool, participants can push buttons, spin cranks, or trigger effects at no-touch activity stations. At “Color Play Trees,” children can push the buttons to project colored light on trees. “Kids often get to play with paint and see what happens when you mix paints, but they don't get to play with light as much that way,” explains Featherstone. “We decided to do a lot of installations that mix lights so they can see how the light interacts, how different colors come together, and learn how light is additive.”
Across “Pixel Play Meadow,” Featherstone scattered low density pixels that react to a thermal map, sweeping colors across the field as children run past. Kids manipulate directionality of light at “Rainbow Caterpillar,” sending colors of light across the Elation Professional SIXBAR 1000s with a wave of their glowsticks. “We're mostly just exploring how light moves, how light is made, and how it is a different kind of color mixing,” she says.
Her favorite section, “Color Walk,” is inspired by Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” music video and features squares of light illuminated by seven Chauvet Professional Ovation IP fixtures, one for every color of the rainbow. “In the ‘Billie Jean’ music video, they're running through these squares of light,” recounts Featherstone. “We're playing with that same motif but I'm using it to overlap colors and show all the secondary colors of the rainbow. It is fun to see people play with their favorite color and run around to mix it.”
A total of 240 lighting fixtures illuminate Kohlights. The lighting equipment features Chauvet Ovation, Martin MAC Aura XB, and a horde of Elation Professional, including Arena Q7 Zoom, Level Q7 IP, Proteus Beam, Proteus Hybrid, and SIXBAR 1000s. Chris Merriman programmed the lighting through two MA Lighting grandMA2 lite consoles with a few Raspberry Pi computers to interface with the thermal cameras. ILC supplied the lighting equipment.
The greatest challenge was keeping the experience simple. “Oftentimes, there is a tendency to want to make it sweeping and beautiful,” says Featherstone, “but we’re really trying to keep it very simple and approachable in a minimally elegant way. We have to think about what it's like to be three to four feet off the ground rather than five or six feet off the ground because it's a completely different view.”
The holiday show’s most important element is fun. “We designed it so that families know that they can have something to look forward to, that it's going to be fun and safe, and parents can hand it over to Kohl Children's Museum for the day because we got this,” concludes Featherstone.
Kohlights: A Mesmertastic Holiday Lightacular runs Dec 11 – 13, 18 – 23, 26 – 31, and Jan 2 – 3.