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Avolites D9 controls Arcadia Dragonfly lighting and video

Avolites’ D9 lighting console and an Avolites AI Qgen media server (with another for hot backup) running Avo’s proprietary Synergy protocol were at the heart of lighting and video control for Arcadia Spectacular’s new live music/performance experience launching their Dragonfly conceptual art installation which debuted at the 2024 Glastonbury Festival (Glasto) in Pilton, Somerset, UK.

Originated and designed by Arcadia’s Pip Rush (creative director) and Bert Cole (technical director), the 30-metre-long, 8.5-metre-high biomechanical Dragonfly is built from an ex-Royal Navy Sea King helicopter and was surrounded by a 50,000-capacity evolved geometric “energy field” at the festival. The sculpture “awakened” every night of Glasto at 23:30, presenting “Warraloo”, a 9-minute show developed by Arcadia in collaboration with the Wadjuk Noongar nation of Western Australia and based on the Dragonfly’s pupation cycle.

The Dragonfly head is covered with over 200 custom hexagonal and pentagonal LED screens, the legs were pixel mapped, the body was projection mapped, and over 200 lighting and LED pixel fixtures were rigged on the construction and dotted around the Arcadia arena, all vital elements of the production lighting scheme created by Dave Cohen from design studio Mirrad. Mirrad was also responsible for designing and supplying the full lighting and visual control system and all the related integration.

Music lovers were treated to a lineup of local and international DJs who played well into the night throughout the 3-day festival, and Arcadia also presented its new 9-minute timecoded performance show - complete with aerialists, fire, lasers, other SFX and massive excitement. In addition to the Dragonfly, four sets of scenic bull-rush podiums, also created from recycled scrap metal, circled the space, two of them doubling as performance areas for elements of the timecoded show. Six 11-metre-high lighting towers were positioned around the outside of the arena, rigged with - among other lighting fixtures - six of Robe’s new searchlight style laser-lightsource iBolts.

Cohen explains that lighting for the event was 95 percent operated live or busked, only the Arcadia shows were timecoded. So with operating sessions of five hours or more, the Avolites D9-330 was his desk of choice for this style of operation. A major creative challenge was ensuring that the Dragonfly was well lit and getting plenty of light into the arena and amongst the crowds to help keep the atmos pumping whilst maintaining the structural integrity and look of the Dragonfly as a piece of industrial art.

Cohen and Mirrad’s Sam Werrett operated Arcadia’s lighting for all artists across the Glastonbury weekend working in close conjunction with the live visuals team featuring Australian artists Peter Walker and Brad Hammond. They used Touch Designer and Unity to bake these visuals onto a UV map, which was mixed by Joe Crossley from Astralprojekt using a MIDI controller.

Using Avolites Synergy to unite the worlds of video and lighting control enabled Cohen and Werrett to see the NDI previews of the visuals being created and instantly match or contrast colour-wise with lighting and crossfade between outputting lighting and video feeds. All the timecoded parts were previzzed in WYSIWYG - using a model of the helicopter - and fine-tuned on site, and they also had a WYG set up on site, networked to the FOH which enabled video and lighting and video to be processed in the same previz environment.

The two D9 consoles - live and backup - were run in multi-user mode, allowing looks, combinations and effects to be prepared and trialled on one and then output on the other as the evening progressed. Coordinating the AI media server side of the control for Mirrad was Arran Rothwell-Eyre, one of the original team behind AI, and Greg Haynes from Avo provided additional tech support. The LED screen design and installation for the head of the helicopter was created by Ben Vaughan and Video Illusions.

The connection between Avolites, Mirrad and Arcadia goes back to 2012 and the famous Spider and their “Metamorphosis” show. An Avolites console has been running their lighting ever since then, and they first implemented Synergy and the AI servers in 2015 which became a crucial part of their touring shows.

(Photos: Steve Bright)

www.avolites.com

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