A giant construction with 800 17 Watt LED sources, 600 meter LED Pixel Strip and 150 Ethernet LED controllers. Saturday, the 5th of July, 40.000 dance music fans celebrated the world première of the brand new Sensation show “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” in the Amsterdam ArenA. OneEightyOne did the LED lighting and LED control in the show.
Sensation did overdone themselves to create a stage that give the audience a truly unique experience. It’s made of the latest technology that partly was invented for the World Tour. All parties involved has released their creativity. Absolutely the next level in the entertainment industry.
‘We managed to come up with a technical proposal for the Sensation stage. The product is custom made and in line with the creative team of Sensation’, says Creative Director Stefan Verhoef of OneEightyOne.
The challenge in LED control
Light plays an important role in the show of Sensation. The new stage is the tallest Sensation decor ever and is surrounded by many lights. The center stage consists of eight arches, each provided with 60 powerful 17 Watt LED spots (2300 Kelvin). The inside of the arches are provided with individually controllable LED Pixels, the DiGidot Pixel Strip.
The powerful LED controller is unique in this installation. OneEightyOne used their expertise of the last few years and developed a smart and powerful LED controller 100% in-house. The device capabilities make it a groundbreaking innovation. By using this device the cabling could be reduced to a minimum. It can looping through the built-in Ethernet Switch with Neutrik Ethercon and powerCON. It’s the first huge show where we have no use of DMX. ‘We’re going from Art-Net directly to the LED’s. This saves a lot of equipment what makes the set even smarter, says Stefan Verhoef.
MADRIX LED software
Despite of the three new GRAND MA’s which are used for the show, the large number of universes were a problem. Therefore, we suggested the LED lighting software MADRIX Ultimate. At first the crew was skeptical but after a good demo they were completely convinced about using MADRIX software! OneEightyOne did the patch and basic programming of the LED Pixel Strips, and did the Art-Net connection between MADRIX and the GRAND MA's.
LED sources dazzle the audience
The brightness of the warm LED source (2300 Kelvin) we have used is so strong that it fills the whole football stadium. We wrote a special program to optimize the dim curve. Normally we dim in 256 steps, now we dim in 65.536 steps (16 bit). We wanted the LED source to go from bright to dim smoothly. Only in some parts of the show we blind the dazzle the audience with these lights.
Working together with the team of Sensation was a dream of Creative Director Stefan Verhoef for many years. ‘We are good in finding innovative solutions and always working with the latest technologies. The project started together with the development of our new LED controller. The LED controller provides you the opportunity to create the unimaginable!
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