Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Bon Iver - ‘i,i’ U.S. Tour (2019)

For the U.S. leg of Bon Iver’s recent tour, lighting designer Michael Brown put 49 x Robe MegaPointes and 25 x Kinetic Lights custom moving mirrors at the core of his dynamic design. Brown has worked with the band since 2012. For this recent tour he also teamed up with WhiteVoid’s Christopher Bauder, a light artist based in Berlin, Germany, who had invented the Kinetic Lights winch system. Bon Iver’s production manager James Dean was also onboard.

Before he approached Bauder, Brown had the design and layout of the winches and MegaPointes all worked out, some of it inspired by the light art installation ‘Skalar’, combined with several original ideas for how it would work with Bon Iver.

The 3D geometry that defined the band’s touring lighting rig was created by five identical overhead chevron trusses comprising 32 ft long wings connected by a 90-degree corner block, which resembled a diamond from the audience perspective and mirrored a diamond-shaped layout of the band risers onstage down below - with no one on the central plane.

The 25 custom diamond-shaped Kinetic Lights LED-outlined mirrors, each suspended on three of their proprietary winches, flew below the chevrons - in five vertical rows of five - able to move up/down/pan/tilt in any direction, controlled by their own KLC control software, developed specially for this purpose.

Then there were two grids of MegaPointes at the core of the rig. A row of 21 fixtures formed a U-shape around the winches with another 21 echoing the same positions on the floor, and all these fixtures were mapped onto the mirrors. The other seven MegaPointes were on the floor aligned directly below certain mirrors. All the flown elements were sub-hung from a mothergrid installed into the arenas.

Lighting - for the MegaPointes plus a number of other moving lights and LED battens and strips - was controlled via a GrandMA2 console which was also triggering the KLC computer for the winch movements. Lighting equipment, all the associated rigging and the set risers were supplied out of rental specialist Clearwing’s Milwaukee shop, with the mirrors and winches a rental from Kinetic Lights in Germany.

Clearwing crew chief and systems designer Sam McKeown made sure that everything worked practically and logistically on the road. It was the first time Kinetic Lights mirrors/winches have been on the road in the U.S. for a concert tour and used in a live band context like this.

Setlist (PNC Arena - Raleigh, NC, USA - October 2019)

iMi
We
Holyfields
Heavenly Father
666
715 - Creeks
Lump Sum
U (Man Like)
Jelmore
Faith
Marion
Perth
Salem
Hey, Ma
___45___
33 “GOD”
Blood Bank
8 (Circle)
Flume
Sh’Diah
Naeem

Holocene
RABi

(Photos: Graham Tolbert)

www.robe.cz

© 1999 - 2024 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories