Groovin’ The Moo is a travelling musical event like no other in Australia with shows set up in regional cities, not the big smoke. This year saw the festival at Maitland, Bendigo, Townsville, Canberra and Bunbury.
Headline acts were Empire of the Sun and silverchair, two acts that coincidentally are both lit by Hugh Taranto.
The show was mainly designed around Hugh’s design for silverchair which in turn had to fit into the touring festivals confines. Turn-arounds were extremely tight – Bendigo one night and Townsville the following – and so a duplicate rig was required.
Hugh had to ensure the rig could easily be erected without him being there and so he opted for three straight trusses, four simple towers and Martin MACs including twenty MAC2000 wash and eighteen MAC2000 spot. Added to that were twelve Atomic colour strobes, four 8-lite molefays, twenty-four molefay duet, three JEM ZR33 DMX foggers, and four DMX fans. Control was a full size grandMA and a grandMA lite networked together.
For the two main acts extra MACs were placed on the floor and on the towers. silverchair were given an extra dimension with the addition of sixteen JARAGs. Displayed in pairs, there were eight JARAG’s suspended from the rig and eight on floor mounts.
”The JARAG’s instantly gave a different look and a big look at that,” commented Hugh. “silverchair have always been into a more analogue look rather than a moving technology look and so the JARAGs were ideal. The band really liked that the JARAGs were a hybrid low tech/high tech device.
”The JARAGs are great; very versatile and almost an instant look. We would set them up during the change over and they were always reliable and easy to get going. Tungsten lamps have a naturally appealing look to them. They’re much less mechanical and more of an organic type of light. So from that point of view the JARAG’s really suited the silverchair type of look.”
Hugh had the JARAGs running through the grandMA console as normal lights and also pixel-mapped through a media server.
“That all merged together in the grandMA so I was able to run video content through them as well, he said. “For some songs I used the full array of individual control of the lights like a wide, basic video device. Other songs I used them more as a lighting device like a big blinder.”
Chameleon supplied the East Coast shows with Concert & Corporate Productions supplying the West Coast.
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