Welcome to the Future! The banners over the entrances to the Kappa FuturFestival trumpet this message as they welcome visitors to Italy’s largest EDM event. Those who take this bold greeting to heart aren’t likely to be disappointed when they enter the festival’s site at Parco Dora, an evocative urban park where metal pylons, rather than trees, mark many paths.
Rising out of the ruins of an abandoned Fiat and Michelin, manufacturing complex, the 456,000 square meter park exudes a stark and hauntingly moving aura with concrete towers and 30-meter high metal beams dotting its grounds. Wandering through the park, one can feel that one is moving through time, traveling from a dystopian post-industrial past into the future.
But exactly what sort of future? For the 85,000 or so who attended the most recent Kappa FuturFestival, the answer is one filled with powerful, forward-looking, provocative, and mind-expanding music performed by many of the world’s leading EDM artists, including Tale of Us, Skrillex, Tiësto, and Carl Cox.
Accenting that music with a bold, futuristic lighting design that incorporated the gripping architectural elements of Parco Dora, was Giovanni Ricciardi, who described the process this way: “This year, in addition to taking care of the lighting part of all the stages of the Kappa FuturFestival, I took care, together with Andrea Moi, of the adaptations of some creative drafts for some of them. That is to say, we transformed some internal ‘ideas’ into reality.”
Helping Ricciardi achieve his vision at the festival were 50 COLORado PXL Curve 12 and 50 COLORado PXL Bar 16 fixtures supplied by ZaLight with services by STS Communication. The motorized tilting battens were used to create transformative, geometric effects on the Voyager stage, which featured the likes of Carl Cox, Four Tet, and the Martinez Brothers.
“The birth of the Voyager stage marked the beginning of a very special relationship with Afterlife and created the conditions for a deep connection to be established between the crew of Anyma and Kappa FuturFestival,” said Ricciardi. “The natural evolution of this dialogue was the creation of a space that took into account the needs of their show.
“Pascal (Bach, Anyma’s Lighting Designer) and I looked for the right machines to bring to the stage that feeling of “solid” and punchy line that characterizes their sets,” continued Ricciardi. “We were seeking an outdoor batten fixture that could let us accomplish this goal. The PXL Bar 16 and PXL Curve 12 immediately seemed like a perfect choice. With the PXL Bar 16, the imposing double line at the base of the monolith (the giant LED wall in the center of the Voyager stage) was built, also the high line at the head and the lines on the PA towers.”
The Kappa FuturFestival marked the first time that the PXL Curve 12 was used in a major live event in Italy. For the festival, they were mainly mapped using MadMapper; the PXL Curve 12 were also used in merges from the bench for tilt effects.
“To describe the characteristics of the two projectors that have been most useful to me, I start with the “trivial” benefits: first of all, they are both IP65, and not having to worry about the weather is one of the greatest blessings for us in the trade,” said Ricciardi. “Then, the PXL Bar 16 is a fast and versatile machine. Its wide zoom makes it useful both when there is a need for punch as a blade, and when there is a need to color surfaces. We used four of the units to color the steel columns next to the stage. So, the PXL Curve 12, in addition to being IP65, are extremely special fixture, given its separate tilt conformation; and the volumetric effects that can be obtained are crazy!”
The Kappa FuturFestival offered fans an opportunity to look into the future of EDM music and production. For Giovanni Ricciardi and his team, it also provides a glimpse into what lay ahead in lighting tools — and that future was indeed very, very bright.
