Elation Proteus Hybrids Provide the Perfect Light Canvas for the University of Arizona

With the help of lights Elation Proteus Hybrids have been installed in the University parking lot for a sensory experience design space.

The lighting installation, video and art design space transforms the parking lot into a beautiful immersive environment thanks to the luminaires Elation Proteus Hybrids.

The lighting design company, Lightswitch, has transformed the Arizona State University parking lot (Arizona State University – ASU), located in Tempe, in a sensory experience. To carry out part of the exhibition, Elation luminaires were used, including Proteus Hybrids models.

under the name design space, drive-thru experience featured visual design installations from industry professionals, Hybycozo structural artists and ASU students enrolled in the Instituto Herberger for Design and the Arts.

Lightswitch, who redesigned the Morton Arboretum in Illinois to make it an experience drive-thru, took advantage of the knowledge gained in this initiative for the mile-long driving adventure, which is done through the Packard Parking Garage. The experience, described as an exploration of the duality of space above us and between us, takes passengers on an immersive journey from our world to outer space through a series of sculptural art pieces and sound installations, light and video.

Education at a live event

The design space project has allowed students to display their art while working on lighting skills, video and production that they have learned through their studies, including how to set up all the equipment. The Director of Lightswitch, John Featherstone, who knows the University well having collaborated in the past with Jake Pinholster, from the Design and Art Department, led the project design team.

Featherstone has also been a guest teacher at the school and has two daughters who graduated from college.. He says his motivation for the project was to give ASU art students, who were affected by the pandemic, the opportunity to work on a live event.

“I realized that there are creative arts students who are going to graduate without having worked in live events. This is why he decided to start this project”.

A perfect canvas of light

The Lightswitch team spent two weeks with the students uploading, focusing and scheduling the project. The white car park structure proved to be the perfect canvas for light with several Elation fixtures forming the core of the experience, Proteus Hybrid moving heads and lights Par LedLevel Q7 IP, along with other automated luminaires.

The Elation Proteus Hybrid IP65 multifunctional moving head is a lighting device that the Lightswitch team is familiar with from outdoor projects., as The Morton Arboretum y Descanso Gardens.

In the case of design space, The units were used to illuminate the exterior of the gigantic parking structure, while the roof beams pierced the night sky to define the outline of the garage. Par Level Q7 IP lights covered the roof deck in color to simulate takeoff from an otherworldly spaceport.

Video West, located in the near Phoenix, e Intelligent Lighting Creations, from Chicago, were the companies in charge of supplying the lighting to the project.

Control de Obsidian

Lighting and video control has been accomplished with a series of media servers and units including a NX Wing of Obsidian Control Systems. This is the complementary USB control surface to the Onyx platform from Obsidian Control Systems.

“For years we have almost exclusively used the Maxxyz driver”, comments Chris Merriman, Lightswitch designer and lighting programmer of the project.” In the case of design space, we use it almost exclusively for the Dylos pixel engine for pixel control for much of the experience. We control some 108 universes of units mapped with pixels, such as lighting tubes and custom-made two-meter-high Led rods”.

The NX Wing provides a responsive hardware surface to drive Onyx and the Dylos integration brings an innovative set of media composition tools, effects, content and text generators, along with a wide variety of parameter manipulation, right at the core of any Onyx console or PC system.