Real cooool news here! Elation’s IP65 moving heads, used by Chris Moylan in impressive beam show, remain reliable in ice and snow.
Year after year, in winter, a Festival of Light at Swarovski Crystal Worlds in the Austrian town of Wattens attracts thousands of visitors. The entire park shines and sparkles in a magical interplay of light, music, and crystal and as a recurring highlight guests are treated to a special 15-minute light show.
Photo © Optikalusion
Swarovski Crystal Worlds allows visitors to experience the wonder of crystal in all its facets. The annual Festival of Light is a breathtakingly spectacular show in which the seven-hectare garden is transformed into a magical luminous atmosphere.
Photo © Optikalusion
This year’s event took place from January 18th to February 17th with technology having to endure four weeks of frosty, snowy conditions.
With Elation’s IP65 Proteus Hybrid made for environments of this type and a record of reliable performance behind it, the all-weather moving head, with a 23,000 lumens bright beam seen from far away, was chosen as the main beam effect in the light show for the second year in a row.
Berlin creative agency StudioNOW was responsible for conception and creative implementation of this year’s Festival of Light in cooperation with lighting designer Chris Moylan from Optikalusion and the Spanish artist collective Playmodes. PRG handled the demanding technical implementation. Elation’s distribution partner in Germany is LMP.
Photo © Optikalusion
Area made out of 800 000 hand-mounted Swarovski crystals, the attraction’s Crystal Cloud was the main arena for the light show. Eight light towers were placed around the Crystal Cloud to which 56 Proteus Hybrids were distributed, seven fixtures per tower. From these positions, the powerful IP65 arc source fixtures provided impressive beam work during the light show. In addition, another six Proteus Hybrid units were used on the Giant, the thematic centerpiece of Swarovski Crystal Worlds.
Photo © Optikalusion
“The Proteus Hybrid not only provides fantastic beams with sensational long-range effect, it has finally freed us from plastic domes,” stated lighting designer Chris Moylan. “Nobody wants to see domes!
With the Proteus Hybrid Elation has finally given us a reliable tool to implement fat beam shows outside. Not only did we use the beams, but we also used gobos and prisms to integrate a variety of details into the show.”
Lighting Designer Chris Moylan.
Indeed, as the Proteus Hybrid features include an advanced optical system with motorized zoom from 2° in beam mode to 38° in spot mode or 40° in wash mode, full CMY and linear CTO color mixing, and 14 dichroic colors including CTB, CTO, and UV, plus versatile 8 rotating glass interchangeable and 14 static-stamped metal gobos, full 360° bi-directional animation wheel, 8-facet and linear rotating prisms, Chris knew he could use a variety of effects.
Funny enough, he forgot to quote on this occasion the advanced internal thermal cooling system, and “Frost” filter. (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, Ed.)
Outdoors in the bitter cold for four weeks, and at times in massive snowfall, can be a challenge for a weatherproof light yet Moylan was impressed. “The week I was there, we only had one single outage,” he says, “and we were struggling with the worst weather conditions ever. The Proteus Hybrid are extremely reliable, they tolerated very well the extreme conditions and are also very bright. I can only recommend them.”
More information on the Elation Website.
Text: Elation. Photos: ©Optikalusion.
