Hobart’s Hanging Garden
Australia - Occupying almost an entire city block, Hobart’s new cultural precinct represents a significant partnership between private developers and DarkLab, a subsidiary of the Museum of Old and New Art.
The first stage of the development, In The Hanging Garden, opened as part of the annual winter festival Dark Mofo. In its initial phase, In The Hanging Garden consists of an extensive urban beer garden and outdoor dining area and at the centre of the site, and providing some protection from the elements, is a dramatically lit 18m-tall skeleton steel Cathedral shelter, around which are split-level spaces filled with rotating food and beverage offerings in converted shipping containers.
During Dark Mofo, the cathedral hosted Night Mass with a variety of acts bravely playing through the cold winter nights. Hobart-based Alive Technologies supplied audio and lighting for the space.
“The space is about 30m long and 12m wide with a really steep pitch roof on it,” explained Colin Boucher, Alive’s project manager. “The roof is clear Perspex and there are no sides to the venue so we added some rigging points either side so we could run trusses down the full length of the space.”
Alive had been looking for the ideal IP65 rated LED washlight for some time and when the Prolights Panorama IPWBX hit the market, they began to get a little excited. The fixture is a IP65 high-output, LED wash light with a pixel ring designed to bring the workhorse LED washlight to outdoor events. Featuring 19 of Osram’s new 40W RGBW Ostar LEDs, it delivers “a massive output with a huge colour range and an extensive toolkit of effects”.
“We looked at some other IP rated LED wash lights, but they didn’t deliver the output that the Prolights Panorama could,” says Colin. “We wanted an IP front wash solution that could do eye candy during the day and could also go out on festivals to be hung from the front truss and be rained upon. Every single time we need to put front wash out in the elements they end up getting destroyed. Tassie being Tassie, it always rains sideways so no matter what creative roof, top hat or dome you put on a mover they end up getting drenched.”
Alive took delivery of 10 Panorama IPWBX just in time for Night Mass where they were used for specials on the stage, general room wash and for beam effects as the Panorama IP WBX offers a massive 45° to 3° to linear zoom range from wash to beam.
“We had no profiles in the rig other than what the Prolights Panorama can do so I was using them for main beam look too,” adds Colin. “Having the macros onboard and being able to break the LEDs down to single pixels with animations, gave me some dynamic looks when required.”
(Jim Evans)

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