SGM Luminaires Starring in High-Impact Art Installation

	"Naked Truth" Photo: Leslie Artamonow www.actld.com

As part of Bright Brussels Festival, ACTLD (ACT Lighting Design) contributed with a very innovative art installation as a total immersion of light, sound, and mist. Lighting-wise, the spectacle was purely comprised by SGM LED luminaires.

Mounted on a specially constructed trussing, forming a symmetrical matrix (35m x 35m), 64 G-Spot moving heads played the leading role, strongly supported by Q-7 RGBW and Q-7 W flood/blind/strobes as well as P-5 and P-2 wash lights.

Koert Vermeulen, principal designer at ACTLD chose to explore the urban space of their hometown and offered a brand new experience to the public in a highly unusual location: a 70m x 80m construction site. Senior lighting designer and console operator, Luc De Climmer, explained: "Minimalism, geometry, and reflection are some of the words that can describe this installation, playing with the industrial character of the site. A crucial detail in the installation was interaction with the water that flooded the entire construction site to get reflection effects from the light. The heavy loads of Belgium rain certainly made its contribution to ensure this request was met."

This outdoor ephemeral installation was placed directly on the wet and muddy ground which reduced the possibility to hide the equipment and cabling system. That demanded very ingenious techniques to ensure the power supply, a quick installation, and the functioning of the installation in these exceptional settings. Being IP65-rated and easy to install and operate, the SGM lighting fixtures were the optimum choice. They were on home turf in this environment and could simply be hosed down afterwards. De Climmer, elaborates: "We of course needed durable fixtures for these tricky outdoor settings. So the fact that SGM's fixtures are IP65-rated and stable in almost any conditions, was of course important to us. However, we considered the output and color rendering at least equally important."

To create an aerial ballet mirrored in the water, the light display (consisting of beams, strobes, and backlight/uplight) of the setting and the special effects (consisting of water mist, smoke, and haze machines by Magic Mist and FX3) were all programmed by an MA Lighting console on timecode with the original soundtrack composed by Musicom.