LISLE, IL — For “Illumination,” a dynamic and interactive holiday light experience at The Morton Arboretum here, Lightswitch principal, project director and LD John Featherstone used more than 300 Elation Level Q7 IP PARs provided by Chicago-based Intelligent Lighting Creations (ILC). A nonprofit outdoor museum where over 4,100 different species of trees and other plants are highlighted in special landscaped areas, the collection is brilliantly illuminated through Jan. 4, 2014.
More details from Elation (www.elationlighting.com):
“The installation challenges the perception that trees in winter are dead,” said Lightswitch principal and project director John Featherstone, who designed the light experience. ‘Illumination’ makes The Morton Arboretum’s majestic trees the real stars of the show, using them as dimensional and remarkable objects to activate with light and projection.
“Working with our partner ILC, Lightswitch transformed the park into a sensory guest experience,” Featherstone continued.
“Illumination” takes place along a mile-long walk, engaging the senses with dramatic uplighting and enchanting color-changing illumination, voice- and motion-controlled lighting installations, video projections and much more. A few of the interactive delights include illuminated trees that change color when hugged or sung to, and trees that interact with light and color with a swipe of the hand.
“The LED fixture portion of the job was originally broken out into 2-4 different LED fixture types with some larger than others,” explained Matt Pearlman, senior account executive at ILC. “We discussed with John the idea of streamlining to one fixture type to ease our installation, cable and spares. He was in favor of the idea as long as the fixture was RGBW, punchy and dimmed well. And, of course, it had to be reliable.”
ILC mocked up about five different fixtures from various manufacturers and ultimately settled on the Elation Level Q7 IP, an IP-65 rated 15W RGBW LED PAR. “The Q7 IP outperformed all the other fixtures we looked at in this price point,” Matt said.
Although ILC ended up adding fixtures to the overall count in order to double up fixtures in areas where the original spec called for larger format LED fixtures, the 300 individually addressable LED fixtures consume about the same amount of power as a typical home.
“‘Illumination’” has been running in harsh outdoor winter conditions for well over a month with very little failure, Matt said. “In fact, we even sustained tornado like weather conditions without any Q7 issues. All in all we have been very happy with them.”
Visitors can experience “Illumination” at The Morton Arboretum most nights until
