This past year, we used a fairly new application of LED lighting specifically called Kinetic Lighting. And we thought it would be fun to go a bit behind the scenes in this first part of the SALT Backstage series, learning a bit more about kinetic lights.
With all the technology that was used at SALT, our team wanted to ensure the utmost of intentionality with all the equipment utilized. With that in mind, one of the biggest benefits of a kinetic lighting system, is the dynamic environments you can create. For instance during one song, they could be at a steep angle in the air, while the next song they could be right over the band and shrink the size of the room substantially, creating an entirely different look.
As you noticed in the video, the system we used at SALT16 utilized 30 motors, one for each point of the triangle. Essentially the triangle was made up of three separate LED tubes, each approximately 20 feet long. The motors themselves act as both power and DMX signal, so it can change colors, brightness, etc. And of course, the cable itself holds the light up as it moves seamlessly through the air.
The Kinetic Lights are programmed with a completely separate console, as the process is quite different from conventional or intelligent lighting. The resulting look with Kinetic Lights was simply beautiful, and we were really happy with how they turned out.
p.s. you may want to also see TripleWide Media’s writeup on the Technology behind SALT16 here.
Video Transcript
Hey guys, we’re here at SALT16, and I want to tell you about these really cool things that we’re using called kinetic lights. As you can see behind me, this ceiling is probably moving up and down and different things like that. What they are is a DMX remote controlled motor.
We have up in the ceiling 30 motors. Attached to the end of each motor, as you can see, are these big long tubes. They’re basically like pixel strips. We have two lighting consoles here. One hog four is for running all of our lights, and the other hog four is just running the programming on the kinetic lights.
Rachel, who’s been programming them, has control over things like, moving them as individual triangles, moving the whole grid together. They can do different colors etc.
It’s a really neat, cool piece because it adds a really killer dynamic of a ceiling that we can make it feel very small and intimate, and at the press of a button fly it out and feel really big. Gives us a really neat dynamic elements. So here we are, kinetic lights at SALT16.
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