USA - Two grandMA consoles and two grandMA lights are used in the production Love, a co-production of Cirque du Soleil and Apple Corps Ltd. celebrating the musical legacy of The Beatles. Lighting designer Yves Aucoin, assisted by Karl Gaudreau and Robert Brassard, employed an extensive number of moving lights and LEDs to light the stage, with lifts going up and down, and foggers to camouflage the lifts.

Love features HD video projections with 100-foot digital, moving images and a panoramic surround sound system. The grandMA's control an array of equipment for the show, including 28 Green Hippo Hippotizer media servers which permit eight different layers of HD images on a curved, translucent screen, a lighting rig featuring more than 200 Vari*Lite spots and washes, 200 Color Kinetics LED fixtures and 22 MDG foggers.

During the production period, Aucoin assisted by Gaudreau and Brassard, each manned a grandma console strategically-placed around the space. With everything networked on the grandMA, one person can run the show, another can update a cue live. Since the new theatre at The Mirage has ETC Net2 nodes installed for DMX distribution, the grandMA was required to output the ETC Net2 protocol, and can speak both languages at the same time.

"It is always an honour to participate on a technical level with the Cirque. They push the envelope to its limits while pursuing their artistic vision. This is the first show that Yves has used the grandMA on, and I am pleased that this was the only console that did not impose technical limits on his art. The grandMA network allows them to control 32 universes of ETC Net2 with no noticeable latency," comments Bob Gordon, president and CEO of A.C.T Lighting the exclusive distributor of the grandMA systems in North America.

(Chris Henry)


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