Sept. 15, 2020 marked 20 years to the day since the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. PLSN’s “Feeding the Machines” columnist (who coined the name of his column based on that event) compared the lighting programmer gig back then, in the “floppy disk era,” with what it is now, and notes that, while console and lighting technologies have grown and changed, moving lights on the whole function very much in the same manner. In terms of workflow, “we utilized multiple consoles and programmers for a number of reasons. First, the processing power of the desks simply did not allow for reliable control of large numbers of complex fixtures. Second, networking of consoles did not exist, and thus multi-programmer environments were not available. It seems odd now to imagine breaking a rig into sections and having multiple consoles/programmers independently controlling all the various elements.”
Brad Schiller, from “Feeding the Machines,” Sept. 2020, page 42
