Turning The G20 Lights On

Text:/ Derek Powell

PAINTING THE TOWN RED… OR GREEN, OR BLUE

The concept behind Paint Your City was to establish a giant canvas across multiple buildings with linked RGB luminaires. Then, members of the public could take control, either from a city centre kiosk or from on-line, and illuminate the buildings with their individual choice of colour scheme – just for a minute at a time.

Setting up a lighting control system across entire city blocks is no small undertaking, so 32 Hundred Lighting were the first people on site as they started establishing their network. “Obviously to have that instant response we had to have a very stable network and the team from 32 Hundred did an amazing job,” Jono observed. “It’s all wireless Art-Net run from a custom app driving Catalyst media servers. A Catalyst server is sitting on the roof of one of the buildings and fed information from the touch screen at South Bank. And we’ve also got a web app with that where people can actually select predetermined time slots for their colour palette and that information gets sent to the server and pre-scheduled.”

If that sounds tricky enough then try doing this in conjunction with the communications nightmare that is the G20. “We had to work fairly closely with Defence Signals and the police so we were on a frequency where they’d be happy” Jono explained with classic understatement. “So that when they start sweeping the spectrum they can make sure that there’s nothing going awry.”

Radio communications wasn’t the only security concern of course and to the security team, lasers were just another potential threat to the World Leaders. “Unfortunately there was some mis-information that ended up in the hands of some of the foreign delegations,” Jono mused. “At the Treasury Hotel we had a few challenges with the dignitaries who initially thought there would be a light and laser show outside. That was one of the reasons for positioning the laser down on City Hall and Suncorp Plaza, although it’s not like a normal laser show. What Oracle Attractions has done is completely different. It’s used the architecture and actually mapped the building with lasers and then made the control interactive for the public.”

THE CHANGING FACE OF BRISBANE

The show using the façade of the Treasury hotel, The Changing Face of Brisbane, is possibly the highlight and certainly the most spectacular element of Colour Me Brisbane. The six-minute son et lumière not only featured animated projection mapping but uniquely includes a live choir, belting out Verdi choruses from the balconies. Jono explained: “It’s all about telling Brisbane’s story – why Brisbane has become a great city. I wanted to do that through the visuals but I wanted to have a connection to the Brisbane people, so we used the Opera Queensland chorus and Queensland Symphony Orchestra to record the soundtrack.”

Although the soundtrack is a recording on most nights, certain weekend performances got the full treatment with the opera chorus singing live amongst the animations.

“From an audio perspective it’s a big undertaking. There’s a lot of radio mics, plus we have in-ear monitors for all the singers so that they’re all in time with the son et lumière.” The live element certainly adds a new dimension, and if you’re quick you can still check out the show on YouTube – just Google ‘The Changing Face of Brisbane’.

CREATIVE DESIGN

Indigenous art features heavily in several of the projection sites and Jono was careful to engage projection designers who could take full advantage of Queensland’s contemporary indigenous arts scene. The massive walls of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) provided a huge canvas for projection designer Craig Walsh to feature works by the likes of Sally Gabori, Richard Bell and Fiona Foley. “There’s no commissioned artwork on QPAC,” Jono noted, “but it was all the best and brightest – the works that would translate really well to projection, and when you see them on the side of the building, they look quite amazing.”

“At the Magistrate’s Court we’ve got the work of Rachel Johnston, another Queensland projection designer. She comes from a rock ‘n’ roll background. She used to do all the visual content for Powderfinger – she now tours the world with bands and performers like Azealia Banks – a very, very accomplished projection designer. She hadn’t done anything on a building before and she’s working with a couple young contemporary indigenous artists – a guy out of Cairns named Shaun Edwards and Megan Cope who’s from Stradbroke Island. Megan has actually produced a new artwork which showcases all the indigenous nations of south-east Queensland overlaid on an old military and geological map.”

PIGI OR NOT PIGI

In addition to video projection, The Electric Canvas has done a couple of buildings with PIGI projectors which project large format (180mm x 180mm) slides and film strips. Jono admitted that the PIGI projection onto the old State Library building, which features images of Queensland Industry, is one of his favourites. “It looks incredible, because it’s one of those buildings that is not crowded by the rest of the city. It actually stands out – I think it looks amazing especially in that first 10 minutes after sunset when there’s still a little bit of light in the sky behind it.”

GETTING THE GREEN LIGHT

Even amidst all the razzle dazzle, Colour Me Brisbane was carbon-offset and green friendly. As far as possible, all lighting was LED but with a collection of 40 projectors, ranging from 3kW Barcos and Christie Roadsters up to 6kW PIGI’s, the festival needed a fair bit of electrical input. Every ampere was calculated in advance and the equivalent in Green power was purchased through a wind-farm in the ACT.

So with G20 gone, will we ever see a regular lighting festival for Brisbane? “We didn’t (and don’t) want to just replicate Vivid or White night – it’s got to have something unique to Brisbane,” Jono insisted. Nonetheless, he sees plenty of interest in, and scope for an annual event: “We are pretty fortunate that the George Street end of town, from South Bank, is a perfect theatrical amphitheatre. Brisbane is a city that lights well and the spectacle works well with the public so hopefully…”