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VersaTILEs on Maximo Park
Nineteen square metres of Element Labs’ VersaTILE LED panels were used by the hotly=tipped UK indie band Maximo Park, headliners of the 2006 Shockwaves NME Awards tour (AKA ‘The Brats’). The 19 sold-out dates featured the very best of burgeoning UK musical talent including the Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets and We Are Scientists in addition to Maximo Park.
The VersaTILES were supplied by Element Labs’ UK partners, Projected Image Digital to Maximo’s lighting designer Stevie Marr.
Marr, a respected LD for many years, is also currently studying Interactive Media at The Arts Institute, Bournemouth, and this was his first substantial tour since starting the course. Marr produced all video content for the Tiles as part of his coursework.
The tour’s standard generic and moving light rig was supplied by Siyan. Marr wanted something special to differentiate Maximo’s highly energetic set, and he wanted it to be video-based to tie in with his college work about using LED as a lightsource.
It was the first time he’s used VersaTILEs. He originally experimented with LED screen panels back in 1999 on a Texas tour, when he realised the medium had huge potential for use as a lightsource as well as a video effect.
He’s been working for Maximo for the last two years. When the NME tour was confirmed, he assessed the available products, and VersaTILES came up as the best low resolution option for what he wanted to achieve. “Nothing else had the 0right attributes,” he explains, adding that the large pixels of the Tiles give a uniform colour and exactly the ‘blocky’ effect he wanted for the band.
Central to his imaginative philosophy is the belief that restrictions make people more creative, so the whole low resolution concept was of huge creative benefit to the show. “The effects have to be simple, and the imagery doesn’t detract from the band - as video sometimes does – because it’s abstract.” Using the Tiles in this was effectively a style statement rather than one of content. Each song had its own content comprised from about three clips.
Projected Image Digital helped source the Tiles for the tour, and the Catalyst digital media server on which his content is stored. Marr also visited their West London office for product training before taking the Tiles on the road, and pre-programmed his WholeHog II console and Catalyst system there. The project was co-ordinated for PID by David March.
The Tiles were spread all over the stage for the tour – varying slightly depending on the venue and available space. Five upstage stands each had two square metes rigged on them, and there were three square metres on the flown back truss and six square metres on the floor.
All the content – about 30 clips in total – Marr created in Illustrator and then animated in After Effects, working on the early stages of this process with his tutor Jason Watkins. All clips were stored as Quicktime movies on the Catalyst computer, triggered from the Hog II.
The VersaTILES have proved extremely reliable on tour, and they’re also very lightweight and portable, making them ideal for touring. Each 50 x 50 cm Tile weighs just 13kg, and eight are fitted into a single flight case for neat in-truck stacking.
http://www.projectedimagedigital.com.
27th February 2006
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