During September, Lightscape, the globally renowned multisensory phenomenon of light, colour and sound, showcased Brisbane’s City Botanic Gardens in conjunction with the Brisbane Festival for its second year of bringing light and breathtaking installations created by acclaimed local and international artists.
Working in partnership with promoters R G Live Ltd, a division of Sony Music, UK-based Culture Creative is the show creator behind a large portfolio of illuminated trails around the world and is no stranger to Australia. They are already working on several 2025 Australian installations.
Creative Culture’s Head of Lighting, Tony Simpson, flew from the UK to Brisbane to take charge of the installations with the trail’s finale Palm Tree Circle Show, a programmed four-minute and 20-second show, the highlight of the event.
Tony keeps a close eye on the new developments in the lighting world although he is almost wholly focused on IP-rated fixtures. Consequently, when Ayrton debuted the IP-rated, laser-source Kyalami, he was very excited.
“It’s phenomenal, inside and outside,” he exclaimed. “On the Palm Tree Circle Show, they do great aerial work, and then they point across to an opposing tree and do a lot of interesting work up and down that tree. Because of how narrow they go, we utilised them, putting patterns from one side to the other, focusing on the trees. They are super fast and responsive and the light output from their size is incredible.”
Twelve Ayrton Kyalami, supplied by Chameleon Touring Systems, are located within the circle at the base of every other palm tree.
Upon first using the Kyalamis, Tony was struck by their narrowness of beam, saying that he thinks it’s extraordinary how many gobos are in a fixture of that size. Unfortunately, he couldn’t fully utilise all of their potential with the Kyalamis as the Tree Circle is close to residential buildings.
“Our aerial work had to have a very, very narrow margin of X and Y active behaviour but they still worked out well,” he added. “I’m a huge Ayrton fan, and our trail work in the UK uses a large number of Perseo and other Ayrton fixtures.”
Tony started this work six years ago when the thought of having a high power, highly reliable, high output, flexible, moving profile unit that you can just sit down on the ground and start using was a distant dream.
“In 2018 even, we either used the SGM G-Spot which was IP rated, which were very heavy and by today’s standards had quite a limited light output, or we were putting MAC Vipers or Claypaky Sharpys in weatherproof domes. Ayrton has totally delivered in terms of IP, outdoor, all weather kit.”
“Did we get to use the Kyalamis on the finale show to their maximum? Well, I’d have loved to have been able to use the full tilt for sure, but on this occasion, what they did for us was still absolutely brilliant!”
The installation also featured five Ayrton Domino LT, 16 x Ayrton Perseo Profile S, six Prolights Panorama IP AB, 24 x Prolights Panorama IP WBX, ten Prolights Eclipse with lenses and 19 Prolights Eclipse without lenses. Added to that were 31 x ShowPRO EX36, 60 x ShowPRO Fusion Quad IP Bars, two Look Solutions Viper 2.6 and two Look Solutions Unique 2.1.
