American dance promoter Insomniac Events, the company behind the enormous Electric Daisy Carnival, teamed up with locals Symbiotic to bring its trance brand Dreamstate to Melbourne’s Hisense Arena on October 1 for a night of deep grooves and euphoric melodies, served up by Paul van Dyk, John O’Callaghan, Rank 1, Sneijder, Genix B2B Sunny Lax, and Mark Sixma.
In keeping with Insomniac’s dedication to providing the best possible experience to its audiences, Matt Chromatic, creative and technical director of set and lighting design firm Chromatic, was brought on board to deliver a unique custom look for the show, wowing the crowd and enhancing the beats. At the heart of Matt’s design were High End Systems Shapeshifters, and the flagship Hog 4 lighting console.
Eight Shapeshifter C1s, wh
ich feature 126 RGB LEDs putting out 24,000 lumens arrayed across seven independently controllable modules, were specified by Matt and hired in from MPH Australia for the gig. “I had used the Shapeshifters previously,” explained Matt, “but that was the white-only model. This time, I went for the RGB version. The Shapeshifters give us something very different to other fixtures. It’s great to have something that can open up so ridiculously wide in such a short distance, so we can go from having a big look out to the room, and then wide for a detailed look for people closer to the stage. We also needed something we could pixel map video to.”
With lighting operator and programmer Michael Hicks on the Hog 4, Matt Osbourne running video and Craig De Vita on laser programming and operation, the Chromatic team kept the sell-out crowd of 7,000 in the moment throughout the eight-hour event. The Shapeshifters were rigged on one of the four circular trusses on the main stage, and controlled via Art-Net. “We used the Hog 4 to run the video component and our custom graphics to the Shapeshifters,” Matt elaborated. “It looked tight; it was clear that the video was triggering the lighting, and they became one. Eight Shapeshifters in that room was a big look, and I’ll definitely be using them again, they’re awesome!”
A self-confessed ‘Hog Boy’, lighting operator Michael Hicks chose to operate Dreamstate from the top-of-the-line Hog 4 console. With two 17-inch touchscreens, five encoders, twelve LCD User Keys, ten faders and master, 48 soft-keys, and dedicated Intensity and Rate wheels to hand, the Hog 4 put everything Michael needed to keep the show on the beat right under his fingers. Support for unlimited Art-Net Universes from
the Hog 4 ensured that the control-heavy pixel mapping demands of the gig were handled without compromise.
With a tight timeline to get the rig built and running, Michael did extensive pre-visualisation and programming in advance. “It was a fast gig to get in,” confirmed Matt. “We had eight hours to install the rig, and we had to programme that night, ready to be up and running for the 6 PM start the next day. The integration from the Hog 4 to all our fixtures over Art-Net was perfect, and once we had all our programming done, it was plug ‘n’ play.”
With Australian High End Systems distributor Lexair supporting all users of Shapeshifter fixtures and Hog 4 family consoles, the dance community can look forward to more mind-blowing lightshows and integrated video running perfectly at events around the country.
