The Red Bull Music Academy stage was one of the 3 stages we curated at the Urban Art Forms Festival 2014. This was the 3rd consecutive year that we have provided an LED installation for this particular stage: Stage One in 2012, Icarus in 2013 and now the Waterbomb. We decided to create a light sculpture constructed out of wood and scrim, mimicking the effect of folded paper. The design was inspired by the traditional origami “waterbomb” pattern and parts of the sculpture are indeed foldable. In order to give a feeling of transparency while still utilizing the massiveness of the structure, we used semi-transparent scrim that looked light in the day and very solid at night when bathed in light. Add in an incredible water projection system as a backdrop and the stage transcended into more than the sum of it’s parts.
Technical Details
The first 3D render was conceived in Cinema4D and was then reconstructed in Rhino to complete the construction plans. In contrast to the other stages we curated at the festival, this structure implemented “dumb” LED strips, instead of the individually controllable WS2811 pixels we used for the other installations. In total, there were 16 controllable elements of the structure that were programmed with a custom Max/MSP patch.
Hardware:
82m RGB LED strip
3 x 48-channel DMX dimmer
3 x 12v 10A power supply
Enttec Artnet ODE
