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Project Type
Concert (Stadium Tour, primary venue capacity 20,000+)
Client：Production Team Unit Company Limited
Artist: Shan Yi-Chun
Venue: Nanjing Youth Olympic Sports Park Gymnasium, Nanjing, China
Lighting Designer：Hsiang-Lin Wu 伍翔麟
Lighting Design Company： ANH Design Company 禾火設計
Project Name
Shan Yi Chun “Lil” Sis 2.0” Concert Tour
Design Criteria
Built around the concept of “giving the same island different faces,” the lighting design deliberately avoids a single, uniform visual style. Instead, changes in color, direction, intensity, density, rhythm, and movement respond to the vocal texture and emotional character of each song. At different moments, the island appears to float and expand, retreat into stillness, or erupt with energy.
Because the production is staged in the round without a fixed front, the lighting architecture had to function equally from every audience perspective. A series of multi-layered circular lighting structures radiates outward from the centre while visually embracing the performer from all directions. Light travels across and between these layers, connecting Shan Yi-chun with audiences surrounding the stage.
The concentric structures also carry narrative meaning. They suggest the protection of an eggshell, the moment of hatching, and ultimately the security and belonging associated with home—visual metaphors that echo the emotional journey of “Lil’ Sis 2.0.”
Rather than functioning simply as spectacle, light becomes an architectural and emotional element of the island itself. It continuously reshapes the performance space with the music, transforming what begins as Shan Yichun’s individual island into a shared home built together with her audience.
Project Description
“Lil’ Sis 2.0” continues Shan Yi-chun’s narrative of growth, evolving from the imagery of sprouting and hatching toward a return to one’s authentic self. The creative brief was to transform the four-sided stage into a shared spiritual island—a space that could feel deeply personal to the artist while simultaneously belonging to the audience surrounding her.
For the lighting team, the primary goal was to give this island a constantly changing emotional identity rather than impose a single visual language across the concert. Light needed to respond closely to Shan Yichun’s vocal character and the emotional trajectory of each song, while maintaining a strong visual relationship with audiences on all four sides of the venue.
The design therefore focused on creating intimacy within a large-scale arena environment, using layered circular structures, direction, movement, color, and intensity to shift naturally between vulnerability, stillness, expansion, and power.
Challenges and Solutions
One of the primary challenges of the project was designing for an in-the-round stage with no fixed front. Every lighting composition needed to remain visually coherent and balanced from multiple audience perspectives while still maintaining a clear focus on the artist. A look that worked from one direction could easily lose depth or become visually obstructed when viewed from another.
To address this, the lighting system was developed around a multi-layered circular architecture. Fixture positions, beam directions, and movement paths were carefully redistributed so that visual information could extend outward from the centre of the stage while also embracing the performer from all directions. This ensured that audiences on all four sides could experience a complete and layered visual composition.
Another major challenge was the production team’s first full-scale use of the grandMA3 control system. For Lighting Designer Hsiang-Lin Wu and the team, this marked a significant transition from the familiar grandMA2 workflow. MA3 introduced substantial differences in software interface, operational logic, data structure, and the way dynamic effects are programmed. In particular, many techniques previously built through the Effect workflow in grandMA2 required a completely different approach and programming logic in MA3.
Faced with an unfamiliar control architecture, the team invested significant time in studying the system’s core logic, technical structure, and advanced features. Through extensive previsualization, programming, testing, and refinement, the team gradually developed a new workflow suited to the production.
Although the transition presented numerous challenges at the beginning, it ultimately allowed the team to fully utilize MA3’s advanced capabilities in live operation. The new workflow improved programming efficiency, enhanced the precision and fluidity of lighting movement, and enabled more sophisticated cue layering and dynamic control.
The combination of the in-the-round circular lighting architecture and the newly developed grandMA3 workflow became a key technical advancement of the project, allowing the production to achieve a higher level of visual consistency, operational efficiency, and real-time responsiveness throughout the performance.
Equipment
The lighting system was developed as a consistent touring package for the entire Shan Yi-chun “Lil’ Sis 2.0” Concert Tour, allowing the creative team to preserve the same visual language, programming structure, and performance quality across different venues.
The core fixture package included 97 EK Lighting MC15 units, 324 ACME Pixel Line fixtures, 308 ACME Cyclone CM150 IP fixtures, 44 ACME CM-1000Z fixtures, 188 S-2000 Strobes, 18 EK Lighting EC60 fixtures, and 17 ACME Ultra Blinder IP units. Two grandMA3 Full-Size consoles formed the primary control system, with MADRIX incorporated for pixel-based content and dynamic control.
The large quantity of linear and pixel-based fixtures was essential to the production’s circular, in-the-round architecture. Rather than treating the lighting structure as a conventional overhead rig, Pixel Line and Cyclone fixtures were distributed throughout the layered circular system, allowing light to define the contours of the “island,” extend movement around the stage, and remain visually effective from all four audience perspectives.
High-output moving fixtures such as the MC15 and CM-1000Z provided the principal aerial and beam language of the production, enabling strong architectural compositions across the large arena scale. Strobes and blinders were used selectively to introduce impact, rhythmic punctuation, and shifts in visual energy without compromising the more delicate emotional sections of the show.
The touring system also incorporated 12 moving follow spots, each integrated into the lighting control environment, together with dedicated follow spot operators and communication systems. This allowed performer tracking and cueing to remain closely coordinated with the programmed lighting throughout the four-sided stage.
Atmospheric control was provided through Hesen haze machines, MDG units, and high-powered fans, allowing beam definition and atmospheric density to be adjusted according to the visual requirements of individual songs.
Most importantly, maintaining the same core system throughout the tour allowed the lighting team to develop the show as a single evolving design rather than rebuild it venue by venue. Programming, cue structure, fixture behavior, and visual relationships could therefore be refined continuously while maintaining a consistent artistic identity throughout the tour.
Team
Artist：Yi-chun Shan 單依純
Lighting Designer：Hsiang-Lin Wu 伍翔麟
Lighting Design Company： ANH Design Company 禾火設計
Production Company：Production Team Unit Company Limited
Show Director / Creative Director：rabbit@ptu
Stage Designer：Hao Design 如何設計 - Hao-Hsin Cheng 鄭皓心
Video Designer：Szu Chieh @ ReCore Multimedia Arts Limited Company
Video Designer（ Interlude 、《有趣》、《好想谈恋爱》、《我表示理解》、《纯寐寐》、《Tender》、《一个人跳舞》、《空耳》、《还你茉莉》) ： wowlab 有點東西視覺實驗室
Lighting Programmer：ANH Design Company 禾火設計
Lighting Crew Chief：Lin-hai Cheng 程林海、Jin Cheng 程金、Feng Li 李锋、Zhi-hui Huang 黄志辉
Lighting Vendor：Defeng Performing Arts Engineering (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. 德峰演艺工程（广州）有限公司、EK Lights EK灯光
Technical Director：126 TECH SOLUTIONS ｜NELSON YEOH
Photography：Colorsola 躁彩視覺