Medialon Gives Audience Control For Brussels Light Show

For a recent installation in the Grand Place de Bruxelles, video, lighting, sound, and multimedia company CANDO in Wauthier-Braine, Belgium used the Medialon software-based system to control eight different interactive programs.

Every year for four weeks in December as part of a city-wide Plaisir d’Hiver illumination celebration, the Grande Place de Bruxelles–considered one of Europe’s most beautiful town squares–lights up to celebrate the winter holidays. From 4pm to 1am each evening, the Grande Place is alight with a number of unique and interactive lighting designs. Fixtures are set up throughout the square to illuminate streets, monuments, the traditional Christmas market, and the ice rink, as well as to create a "living painting" of light on the Grand Place itself.

Interactive controls are located in the center of the square for people to participate in the event. A circular, rotating platform welcomes the audience, giving a 360° view of the entire locale. On the interactive controls, nine large push-buttons allow audience members to trigger eight different sound and light scenarios, including manipulating lights on the 22-m Christmas tree, changing colors of the surrounding buildings, controlling snowflake and spiral gobos projected onto the town hall, and initiating two different laser/disco ball effects.

To synchronize and monitor all the elements, CANDO chose Medialon technology, since it allows users to program, control, and synchronize a limitless number of external devices. Medialon Manager software controlled the Christmas tree rotations, music, lights, equipment power supply, and the rendering of lighting sequences for the MAC, City, and PROV-LED fixtures.

Brussels-based Magic Monkey, specialists in interactive, large-scale communications, designed the extravaganza and worked with CANDO to oversee the installation. "The challenge was to send the signal from the nine push-buttons to the different controlled devices, which could be as far as 150m away," comments CANDO’s Philippe De Winter.

"I decided to use Medialon for this show in order to get the best return of produced effects. Having required start-up and shut-down times (by order of the police force for general safety) and wishing to obtain frequency statistics for the entire show, the choice to use Medialon was an easy one. We had no problems during the month-long process. Thanks to Medialon technology, any one visiting the Grande Place was able to make their own show," concludes De Winter.