In May, TEDxCambridge 2018 brought together 2,500 people to hear seven distinguished speakers share innovative new ideas at the Boston Opera House. The responsibility of setting the stage for this prestigious event fell to Port Lighting, who used seven of ADJ’s compact and powerful Vizi Beam RXONE fixtures.
Port Lighting has been working with TEDxCambridge for the past two years, initially providing the lighting for their smaller VIP guest salon dinner events. This came about due to an introduction made between the event’s organizer, Dmitri Gunn, and Port Lighting’s VP of Permanent Systems, Ron Kuszmar, who soon built up a good collaborative relationship.
“At Port Lighting, our core values revolve around integrity, community, quality and innovation,” explains Kuszmar, “and TED is all about sharing innovative ideas in community in a way that strives to champion excellence, empowering people to be the best that they can be. What they do really matched well with who we are as a company and there was also an instant connection between Dimitri and myself, which is what really pushed us to want to work together.”
One of the signatures of TED events is a circular red carpet which provides the focal point from which speakers deliver their talks. For their 2018 event, Gunn and the TEDxCambridge team wanted to take this concept to a new level by creating a semi-circular thrust stage that allowed the circle of carpet to extend out beyond the edge of the venue’s regular stage. Furthermore, they wanted this extended stage fitted with lighting fixtures that would project tight beams of light upwards so that it would look as if speakers were standing on a dais of light.
“They were inspired by the Tribute in Light, which commemorates the September 11th attacks by shooting up two columns of light from the New York skyline in the place where the twin towers once stood,” explains Kuszmar. “So I knew that we needed a powerful fixture, but they also sent me some very specific concept artwork that called for the beams to come up out of the circular stage, which mean the lighting units themselves would need to be concealed.”
This presented the Port Lighting team with the task of sourcing a lighting fixture that would be compact enough to sit within the custom-fabricated structure while also offering enough power to create the dramatic effect that was called for in such a large space. The original plan was to use ACL fixtures, however the client also wanted the ability to color the beams and – because the units had to be encased in the stage – heat was also a consideration.
After evaluating various options, Kuszmar decided on ADJ’s Vizi Beam RXONE moving head fixture. The quick-moving RXONE utilizes a potent 1R HTI long life lamp to create a super sharp beam of light capable of traveling up to 100 meters. This can then be shaped using a color wheel, GOBO wheel, prism and frost filter to create a wide variety of different effects. Despite its intense brightness, the fixture has a low power draw of just 199W, is extremely efficient – which minimizes excess heat – and is also incredibly compact.
“The Vizi RXONE met all of our requirements – it is extremely bright, has an extremely tight 3-degree beam angle and is very compact – but it also gave us the added benefit of the 16-facet prism, GOBOs and movement that we could utilize during the show. That transformed the original idea from a simple column of light to a much more versatile design feature that gave us the potential to enhance the overall effect of what could be achieved.”
