UK – Kinesys broke a personal world record in Creamfields 2018’s Steel Yard – a 10k capacity venue built on the festival site. The venue used 144 Kinesys variable speed chain hoists in a single installation, designed to fly an ambitious and spectacular lighting design at one of the UK’s premier electronic music events.
More details from Kinesys (www.kinesysusa.com):
This is believed to be the greatest number of Kinesys variable speed chain hoists used – to date – for a single installation!
The design was based around 36 x 2-metre square trussing pods – 12 above the stage and 24 over the audience – all of them flown on four half-tonne Kinesys motors running with Elevation 1+ drives.
The creative impetus was to have a fluid and never-predictable design which could physically change the architecture and shape of the space, with pods able to tilt and pitch in all directions on all axes. The four motors / Elevation 1+’s specifically offered this degree of flexibility to each of the pods.
PRG’s head of event services Rich Gorrod project managed the installation, working with a highly skilled crew including Pete Macdonald, Dave Evans, Mark England and Jarag Zajag, all experts in automation systems. Also closely involved was Ian Greenway of technical production management specialist LarMac LIVE, the company responsible for technical production across all stages at the festival.
When Rich received the lighting plot he and PRG’s rigging consultant Q Willis decided that Kinesys was “the only motion control system worth its weight in gold and therefore the best option to fulfil all the requirements!”
He further commented that “Kinesys motors are incredibly easy to rig and rock solid reliable,” a must when dealing with an event of this profile and scale.
Each of the over-stage pods was rigged with eight GLP Impression X4 Bar 20 LED battens and four JDC1 LED strobe / floods, together with a 25-channel Chromalech Jarag-5 fixture in the center.
With the space being a substantial 50 meters wide by 120 long with around 18 meters of headroom, the 24 pods in the house were loaded with that same lighting kit, plus four Robe Pointe multi-functional moving lights, one Martin MAC Viper profile and a Chauvet STRIKE4 LED 4-lite blinder.
In total, there were over 1000 lighting fixtures across the full Steel Yard rig!
The Kinesys motors, powered by six Kinesys Array PD-ESs, provided up to 125A of emergency-stop switched power each, all protected by adjustable RCDs.
Front end control was via two Kinesys Vector computers, one dealing with 12 pods and 48 hoists over the stage, operated by Pete Macdonald, and the other running 24 pods and 96 hoists above the audience, operated by Dave Evans.
To ensure that everything was safety and securely installed, Rich and the PRG team designed a dual mother grid design for over the stage and then installed 12 separate mother grids above the audience, all made out of 52 cm trussing. These consumed 158 sections of 3 meter Prolyte truss and over 100 x 1 tonne hoists alone, all separately hung. The automated pods – constructed from 144 x 2 meter trusses and 144 corner blocks – were all sub-hung from these mother grids to spread the load.
All cables – socapex, data and separate power / data feeds for a laser system supplied by BPM SFX were run neatly and efficiently along the mother grid trussing to the pods.
Ahead of the event Rich and the crew spent three days in the yard prepping and addressing the motors for the installation. They loaded the rigging in on the Monday before Creamfields opened, giving them only two days to build. Programming sessions started on Thursday, with PRG also supplying all the Steel Yard’s lighting and video equipment (delivered to site in nine artics)!
Challenges included dealing with the undulating topography that characterizes the Steel Yard at Creamfields, so plenty of energy is needed to maneuver flight cases. There’s also a 6-metre height differential from one end to the other to take into consideration.
Kinesys’ Dave Weatherhead commented, “Creamfields has to be the best known and most popular dance event in the UK, and we are very proud of the fact that that Rich and the team specified Kinesys for this record-breaking event”.
