Event Lighting

Vivid Sydney is a 23-day festival of light, music and ideas that takes place in Australia’s largest city. Now in its eighth year, Vivid began as Smart Light Sydney festival with a focus on energy efficiency by lighting designer Mary-Anne Kyriakou and headlined by musical artist Brian Eno. It is now called the world’s largest outdoor “art gallery,” with the 2016 event drawing more than two million visitors outdoors to downtown Sydney during May and June, the coolest (and darkest) time of the year in Australia.

Once upon a time, by the sea in a western land called L.A., before the creation of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), there was a gathering called the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Great in size and broad in scope, much confusion reigned, for the leaders who ran it had no idea about what do about a village of “video games.” The video game players would gaze on the latest innovations in car alarms, refrigerators, stereos, and telephones imploring in despair, “Where are our games?”

A little light can go a long way in the darkness. It can bring awareness to surroundings. it can cut its own path. It will draw the human eye to it every time. That is the sole intention of Light it up Blue. How a few blue lights can draw the public’s attention to a plight that now affects us all.

Manufacturing an award-winning automobile involves the talents of a multitude of designers, engineers, artisans, and technicians. It requires an equally unique mix of talented people and companies to present that vision in the best possible light onto the show room floor. This year at the 2016 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) demonstrated just how far that vision could go. “Let’s put the show back in the auto show,” were the marching orders from FCA. Their vision led to perhaps the largest pixel count on any show ever, totaling 30 million.

Significant milestones deserve memorable celebrations. For most organizations, a rented ballroom or restaurant space is sufficient. The game changes when the organization is among the nation’s largest and well-known mega churches. In the case of the South Barrington, IL-based Willow Creek Community Church, its 40th anniversary celebration called for a much larger space — Chicago’s 20,000 capacity United Center arena. The goal was to deliver the same immersive visual experience that congregants had come to expect from the church’s worship services.

Christmas comes very early each year for LD Tomm Gillies. His design company, SeeKing Productions, has been collaborating with “Christmas on the Potomac” (COTP), featuring ICE! since 2010. The annual event at the Gaylord National Harbor Marriot in Washington DC returned this year, opening on Nov. 21, 2015.

Every winter, we see videos of some amazing large-scale Christmas light shows that take place. We see houses adorned with a million sparkling lights. Projection mapping on houses mixed with choreographed lighting. I’ve seen live animals, moving lights and trucks decked out with lights. But the Granddaddy of all of them takes place every year at Fred Loya’s house and grounds in El Paso, Texas.

Once every two years, 19 city blocks — 68 acres — of the Dallas Arts District is transformed into a visual wonderland of projected, digitized, pixilated and coherent light. The Dallas Aurora Festival 2015, billed as “an immersive free public art event of light, video and sound,” it serves as a showcase for “New Media” artists now coming of age in today’s art world. Urban structures are illuminated with high-powered digital projectors, and reflecting pools come to life in a cascading display of lasers. Coupled with the endless line of food trucks and over 60,000 attendees, this seems like a pretty good way to spend a Friday evening in Dallas, Texas.

As the old New England saying goes, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” So while the earth-toned Christmas of 2015 came on the heels of a freakish warm spell, it would be a mistake to assume that a complex touring production during the month of December will always be met with clear roads and balmy, shirt-sleeves weather.

Mary J. Blige Sings, and VIP Guests Imbibe, at the Foot of the Statue of Liberty

The Budweiser Made in America Festival, presented in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend, is sponsored by Anheuser–Busch and produced in partnership with Live Nation. This year, the pre-festival kicked off the with the first ever event in Budweiser’s Monument Series, which was a free, private concert on Liberty Island by nine-time Grammy Award winner, Mary J. Blige.

The Airbus H160 Helicopter Gets a Show-Stopping Reveal

When Airbus Helicopters, a division of Airbus Group, decided to debut their brand new H160 helicopter, they wanted to ensure that the reveal was done on a scope fitting the Airbus brand of excellence and the elegance of the craft itself.

Forever Cunard Marks 175 Years with a Queen Mary 2 Sound and Light Show in New York