The small Australian town of Wee Waa (population 2000) made the headlines last month by hosting the official global launch party for Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories at their annual agricultural show. After the pet show, dog-jumping, the crowning of Wee Waa’s Miss Showgirl, and a firework display, ‘Give Life Back To Music’ burst out of the speakers, and the party was well and truly on.
The event was presented but not attended by Daft Punk, whose aforementioned album is set to become one of the fastest-selling in history – althoughin Wee Waa it played to a crowd of 4,000.
Daft Punk’s production house Daft Arts conceived and designed the space, which lived up to its description as a cross between Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The eye-popping circular dance-floor, with a giant disco ball hanging overhead, was the largest outdoor video dance-floor ever seen in Australia, and quite possibly the world.
Australian lighting designer Jamie Centofanti was brought onboard to make Daft Arts and Sony Music Entertainment Australia’s vision a reality. Chameleon Touring Systems supplied the lighting and crew.
“Daft Punk were aiming for the world’s largest video dance floor which they wanted to be circular,” commented Jamie. “Having used Martin LC Panels many times since their release in 2007, I am a big fan of the product. It really was a ground breaking product and a popular choice for many designers first foray into video integration.
“With the continual flood of new video product on the market the LC Panels are not seen so often on show’s nowadays but as I explored other options, I kept coming back to the LC Panel as the best large footprint, lightweight reliable product that I could get my hands on. However 290 square metres is a considerable video wall, or floor, and in order to get the size required we used every Martin LC Panel available in the country, sub-hiring from eight production companies in four states.”
The dance floor, which resembled an LP record, comprised of 110 Martin LC Panels and 16 Martin LC Plus Panels. The 19 metre clear Perspex circle had a black surround ring taking the dance floor out to 28 metres in diameter. The Panels were run back to a Martin P3 processor and then into a Catalyst media server run off a grandMA console.The content was a collaborative effort between Daft Arts and Australian creative collective Strictly &Lowdown, with visuals created by Daft Arts and Rachael Johnston being operated and mixed live by Ken Weston.
Martin MAC2000 XB washes were positioned on the entry way arches to supply general wash to the dance floor whilst Atomic Strobes were mounted on the verticals of the arches. As well as strobing, the Atomics were used as large blinders to do stabs of lighting and big circular chases around the dance floor.
Colin Rendell and Simon Downs were the technicians responsible for making sure the LC Panel dance floor became a successful reality.
Photos: Joshua J Smith
You must be logged in to post a comment Login