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NEW SOFTWARE allowed Gary Numan’s tour to integrate lights and video imagery seamlessly, according to creative designer Luke Edwards, with lighting fixtures using pixel mapping to project images from the screen out towards the audience.
Using two Avolites Sapphire Touch consoles, plus the manufacturer’s Ai Q3 media servers running the new Synergy software, Edwards was able to amplify Numan’s “end-of-days” visions, using GLPs and Vari-Lites whose colours and effects matched those on the screens.
“Synergy integrates lighting and video so beautifully, so powerfully, that it’s changing the way we think and design,” says Edwards, who explains that the software works by streaming Ai video colour data through any fixture group, integrating them into a larger video canvas.
“During the show there were incidences of flames in the video content,” he says. “Synergy took this signal and fed it to the fixtures, meaning they all flickered with exactly the same colours and intensity – it took the 2D video screens into the 3D space so the entire stage looked like it was on fire.”
Numan played venues such as London’s Royal Albert Hall (cap. 5,300), Newcastle City Hall (2,150) and Cardiff’s St David’s Hall (2,000).
