Inspired by Paris’ Nuit Blanche, White Night sees Melbourne’s city streets, laneways, landmarks and cultural institutions transformed into a cultural playground from dusk-till-dawn. Every night for over 12 hours, visitors could participate in an urban adventure of exhibitions, street performances, fashion, lighting installations, film screenings, multimedia projections, concerts, dance and interactive events.
cooulx Pandora’s Box media systems were vital in the success of two of the major installations: Vortex and Molecular Kaleidoscope – ‘Virus One Billion Times’.
Rohan Thornton, technical manager for the festival, designed Vortex which saw the Southbank Pedestrian Bridge warped into an immersive cocoon sparkling and flickering with light and colour. This light tunnel was an extraordinary illumination in the centre of the river extending the creatively lit landscape of White Night Melbourne to the south.
Resolution X supplied the coolux Pandora’s Box for Vortex with the tunnel constructed from Pro Shop LED Tubes and assorted RGB LED fixtures. The pixel mapping function of Pandora’s Box was used for linear and graphic content to give a feeling of travelling through a tunnel of light.
Molecular Kaleidoscope – ‘Virus One Billion Times’ was a massive internal projection project inside of the State Library of Victoria with coolux and projectors supplied by Technical Direction Company. The library’s famous domed La Trobe Reading Room was morphed into a vast microscope with a magnifying power of one billion times. Showcasing the work of BAFTA and Emmy award-winning artist Drew Berry and composer Franc Tétaz, Molecular Kaleidoscope – ‘Virus one billion times’ was a spectacular biomedical animation with projections of giant 40-metre viruses.
“It’s a massive room 35 metres high and 35 metres wide and with its octagonal shape, it’s a pretty significant surface,” commented Rohan. “Peter Lynn TDC’s technical director with Drew Ferors the projectionist. They coordinated the machines and video mapping using the warping function of the Pandora’s Box. All of the content was played via the Pandora’s Box and time code out of the Pandora’s Box triggered the sound system that was played off of Pro Tools.”
The shape of the room dictated a 360 degrees on a horizontal plane and 270 degrees on a vertical plane projection which was achieved by melding together twelve 26K Barco projectors, all pointing in different directions.
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