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Robe fixtures selected for ‘Skalar MX’ immersive art installation

Light artist and designer Christopher Bauder and composer/music producer Kanding Ray brought their immersive kinetic light/sonic art piece ‘Skalar’ to Mexico City for a 5-week installation, which also featured seven live shows in Fronton Mexico, on the Plaza de la Republica.

Ninety Robe Pointe moving lights plus 65 x double-sided mirrors each with a perimeter ring of 180 addressable pixels and suspended on 195 x custom WhiteVoid motors were at the core of the work.

‘Skalar’ premiered at Kraftwerk in Berlin last year. The former turbine hall of the derelict old power station provided the backdrop for this powerful piece. Fronton Mexico offered similar installation and spatial parameters for the lighting, mirrors/kinetic winch system and audio set-ups, but being a black box space, it was a completely new environment.

These challenges appealed to Christopher Bauder, David Letellier (Kanding Ray) and production manager Martin Kuhn who has worked with Bauder on several projects and is based in Germany and Mexico. Whilst essentially the same show, some of the soundscape and lighting cues were reimagined for Mexico.

Based on Plutchik’s ‘Wheel of Emotions’, audiences experience the full range of eight primary emotions - Anticipation, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, Sadness, Surprise and Trust - during the live ‘Skalar’ show - with Kanding Ray playing and Christopher Bauder operating the lights. The looped version of the installation which played every day touched on the six primary emotions.

Martin and local production manager Jose “Pepe” Cuevas coordinated all the local suppliers which included LED Project who supplied the Robe Pointes with support from Robe’s International team - having supported the original installation in Berlin as a technical partner - together with Robe’s Mexican distributor, Showco.

The WhiteVoid design and Kinetic Lights mirrors, winches and custom KLC control - also designed by Christopher Bauder - were brought over from Germany whilst rigging and the 6-point L-Acoustics sound system specified and designed by David Letellier was supplied locally.

The winches and mirrors were rigged in the roof of the space - utilising the Fronton’s house trussing and rigging facilities - with the Pointes positioned all around on three sides. Seventy-five Pointes were attached to the walls on ladders with 15 on top of three totem trusses positioned on the floor in the centre of the space.

Each mirror was controlled by three winches giving 7 metres of up/down movement plus pan/tilt. The mirror movement is controlled via Art-Net by Kinetic Lights’ proprietary KLC software platform, and the whole system is networked.

DMX data signals for the Pointes were converted from Art-Net and integrated into the custom KLC computer where Bauder and his team programmed a series of lighting treatments emulating and stimulating emotions. These were rendered as cues in real-time during playback, triggered by MIDI keys from the Ableton Live system running the master track during the looped ‘Skalar’ show.

Bauder and Letellier also performed seven special ‘Skalar’ live shows where they are manipulating the sounds and visuals. These performances are more intense and use the expanded range of all eight emotions and the associated lighting and sound treatments.

Ahead of the show, all the Robe Pointes were re-lamped, and the on-site technical installation was completed over a two-week period with 10 LED Project crew working on the lighting. Sound was installed by Serpro Producciones from Mexico City.

There’s future talk of staging ‘Skalar’ elsewhere in Mexico, but for those wanting to catch it again in Europe, the next dates are in Amsterdam Jan 10th-Feb 5th 2020 in the Gashouder, an ex-industrial venue with a completely new set of technical and creative parameters.

(Photos: Louise Stickland)

www.robe.cz

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