The Netherlands - HA Rental purchased a number of Philips Selecon Pacific and PL3 LED luminaires from Philips entertainment brand VAR (Value Added Reseller) for the Netherlands, Rolight, in order to create a dramatic lightscape for the first edition of the Ice Sculpture Festival in Zwolle.
This year the theme was decidedly nautical. Festival directors Ten4 Events and Joor Events invited more than 40 ice sculptors from around the world to wield chainsaws, chisels and cutters and fill a 2000sq.m thermal tent with a stunning display of ice and snow carvings. Sculptures included naval heroes, sea animals, ocean monsters, and ghostly ships alongside spacemen, superheroes and fairytale characters.
Lighting designer for the Festival was Jasper Schimmel, whose brief was to bring sparkling dimension, shape and dynamic colour to the crystal clear, glass like figures and frosty snow sculptures.
Schimmel's choice of lighting angle and intensity emphasize and enhance the fine artistic detail in each piece, while his choice of colour gives the sculptures life and depth. Schimmel comments, "First and foremost, Hans and I chose the Philips Selecon PL3 LED wash because it's currently the most efficient fixture of its type on the market. An exposition of snow and ice is the perfect opportunity to experiment with them as we required a luminaire that has ultra low heat emission and minimal UV light radiation.
"The PL3 LED wash offers all this and more. We also made good use of the versatile and dynamic colour temperature and, because the event is making every effort to keep its energy use low, the PL3s high output ratio to low energy consumption and flexible zoom make them ideal to effectively light both small and large objects.
"The powerful output combined with soft colour mixing and accompanied depth is quite unique, you certainly don't recognize the PL3 as being a LED luminaire. But most of all we appreciated the excellent output and impressive colour spectrum, regardless of the zoom used. Also, because of the variation in source/object distance from the lighting, the fine zoom proved to be very helpful."
Hans Alders, managing director of HA Rental continues, "Our aim was to achieve a ratio of highest functionality to lowest heat emission from the luminaires we specified. The venue had to be kept at eight degrees below zero centigrade at all times. Philips Selecon luminaires were my first choice because I knew that they would be robust enough to work at consistently low temperatures, day after day, for the full two months and yet still offer the functionality and low maintenance standards we required."
