Amsterdam Light Festival: CueCore @ Echelman

Friday 7 December saw the opening ceremony of the Amsterdam Light Festival with 5000 visitors walking the streets of Amsterdam to view the light installations by internationally acclaimed artists. Visual Productions are proud to have sponsored one of the key projects by American artist Janet Echelman.

The CueCore is used to control the lighting of the Echelman “1.26 Amsterdam” project which hangs magnificently, above the river Amstel outside the Stadhuis – Amsterdam City Hall. The structure is in place as part of both the Illuminade and the Boulevard of Light.

Janet Echelman gives a new shape to the urban airspace with monumental, fluid, and moving sculptures that respond to environmental forces such as wind, water and sunlight. 1.26 Amsterdam is a reference to the earthquake in Chile in February 2010 that caused the day to be shortened by 1.26 microseconds. For Echelman, the possibility to integrate the reflections of light off the river Amstel, makes her work so unique.

Echelman was aided in the lighting design by LD Rogier Van Der Heide, they nicknamed the 4 scenes, Watercolors, Ghost, Launderette and Truth Revealed. Programming the lighting for them was Floriaan Ganzevoort from De Theatermachine. Speaking with him about his first experience of the CueCore, Ganzevoort opened with an enthusiastic “it really worked well!”. The fixtures, sponsored by Philips Lighting, included 20 x ColorReach, 11 x City Color, 20 x Spectral LED Par Cans and 10 x ColorBlast. Ganzevoort used his Strand Palette VL in combination with the CueCore for programming, capturing DMX streams he then recorded the entire show into the CueCore.

Ganzevoort stated that the CueCore is “an elegant way to program, an elegant software package” of which he was pleased to point out that he was “surprised it is so easy”. Ganzevoort used the integral real-time clock for 24 hour playback of the designed scenes. Using the CueCore in place of a PC based / console controller, Ganzevoort is assured of a trouble free, reliable solid-state solution, during the outdoor festival, which runs until January 20 2013.