Now that LDI is literally just days away, it’s time to pause for a second and consider what new goodies might be on the show floor, especially in the red-hot field of immersive technologies as well as the now-ubiquitous LED. Live Design queried Aron Altmark, founder and creative director of Visual Endeavors, an entertainment design firm focused on reimagining the live entertainment experience through art and technology. He has designed everything from concert tours to working on interactive installations and developing VR experiences, and shares with us his deepest desires when it comes to new technology he’d like to see on the LDI show floor—exhibitors take note!
Aron Altmark, Creative director, Visual Endeavors
The time has come upon us, as every year, for our weekend pilgrimage wandering through the desert that we call LDI. Pack your cushiest shoes, sturdiest liver, and several pairs of sunglasses if you want to survive the show floor the morning after the Center Bar.
This LDI for me will be all about new media and immersive technologies that enable creation of effects on timetables previously impossible. I’m very much looking forward to getting hands-on with the new server advances that have been made incorporating real-time rendering. Notch just released their 0.9.19 update with over 40 new features that I look forward to checking out in person with the 10bit team, as it’s become the go-to tool in the industry for creating generative, interactive, and real-time rendered content. The media server aisle is going to be popping, and likely quite warm from all the GPUs—Green Hippo has its new Montane+ server, built to run Notch blocks at retina-bleeding speed (I mean really, just look at those Notchmarks). Avolites also has their Ai version 10.1 on the horizon with lots of goodies including full Notch support, massive performance gains, and re-engineered timeline. And I’ll of course be swinging by d3 Technologies to see the new gx line of d3 servers, aimed at real-time and generative content distribution.
The show floor in the lighting genre is shaping up to be the showdown of who will create the best LED moving head, as well as which manufacturer can create the best and brightest weatherproof fixtures, all of this really opening up the ability to design more freely for outdoor festivals and venues. Among these, I’m keen to lay eyes on the latest in Elation’s Artiste and Proteus line, which I’ve been very impressed by in previous demos; Ayrton’s new Gibli and Merak fixtures; and Claypaky’s Axcor LED Profile. The ability to place fixtures without the need for weatherproofing domes and not worrying about lamps is going to rapidly change the game for designers and rental houses alike.
I’m also very much looking forward to seeing a few genre-blending fixtures in the wild that I just haven’t had time to take a closer look at. Being able to utilize a single fixture to fill multiple looks and roles in a production helps budgets and enables more creative uses out of less gear. One these is the GLP JDC1 strobe—their new pixelated hybrid wash/strobe that I love the look of. Claypaky’s new K-Eye HCR wash light looks stunning on paper, giving discrete and precise control of color rendering by adding cyan, amber, and lime chips to the standard RGB arrangement of LEDs. I’ll also be visiting the Robe booth to run their MegaPointe through its paces—having used some of the first fixtures on Europe festivals this summer, and it could be my new go-to multifunctional spot/beam fixture.
Most of all at LDI, I’m looking forward to the annual melding of the minds and opportunity to see industry friends. With everyone traveling and doing shows all the time, it’s quite rare to be able to sit down and catch up with far-flung peers for more than a few minutes at a time, and for me the best part of this conference, shiny toys aside, has always been the human component.
Aron Altmark will be speaking at LDI2017 on the panel: Lighting Control Systems Designs In The Real World