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Corona: Robe iPointes illuminate “My Light Shines On” installation in Edinburgh

“My Light Shines On” was a large-scale light art installation designed by Kate Bonney and Simon Hayes from Lightworks, commissioned by the world’s leading performing arts festival, Edinburgh International Festival, to mark what would have been the opening weekend of Edinburgh’s 2020 Festival Season.

Fourteen separate lighting installations around the city highlighted some of the most famous venues of Edinburgh’s festivals in August. Two hundred and seventeen Robe iPointes were selected by the artists as core components to “My Light Shines On”.

Four signature sites - Edinburgh Castle, Calton Hill, Bristo Square and Charlotte Square - all featured identical circular iPointe installations, with 36 fixtures arranged on decking in two concentric rings, 12 units on the inner ring and 24 on the outer.

Lighting designers Kate Bonney and Simon Hayes were inspired by the tradition of ghost lights, a single light that is always left illuminated in theatres. It is a symbol that, though the stage is empty for now, the building will be filled with laughter, tears and applause once again.

These four, plus three other beacons - on the top of the Festival Theatre (35 x iPointes arranged in two rows), 9 x iPointes on the Queen’s Hall and another collection of moving lights on the Usher Hall - were the seven largest and most visible elements of “My Light Shines On”. The full work also included lighting of stage doors with festoons and collections of ‘ghost lights’ running in theatre foyers with around 284 LED fixtures deployed.

Coordinating amassing and displaying all the lighting equipment was Edinburgh International Festival’s head of lighting Dan Quayle, working closely with Calder Sibbald and James Gow of Edinburgh-based rental company Black Light, while John Robb, the International Festival’s head of technical oversaw the whole operation including planning, logistics and crew, ensuring that everything was delivered to the Covid-19 compliance requirements.

In addition to Edinburgh Castle’s 36 x beacon iPointes, another 17 fixtures were ensconced on the castle battlements, run via a wireless DMX connection sent to a receiver at the base stage below on the Esplanade. The Wi-Fi at Calton Hill was also provided from the Castle’s wired internet connection as there was a direct line-of-sight between the city’s two high points.

The beacon lights were programmed and run on GrandMA consoles - with nine dotted around the sites, all independently running to the same timecoded showfile. All the sites had internet access and were networked, so any updates from ‘base’ control at the Castle could be sent to all control consoles simultaneously, which enabled updates to be sent to all sites from anywhere via programmer Neil McDowell Smith’s laptop or phone.

In addition to the 265 moving lights used for the “My Light Shines On” beacons, another 480 generic and LED luminaires were used across all the sites to highlight some related monuments and structures and environmental detail like the trees in Charlotte Square. Additional architectural lighting was provided for the National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill and the Castle had its standard permanent installation enhanced along with that of the other venues.

Several local companies worked on the project, including Black Light and Direct Control who dealt with all the power and distro. Black Light also collaborated with Hawthorn, one of the main Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe suppliers. Edinburgh International Festival launched “My Light Shines On: A Celebration of the Festival City”, a specially commissioned film, on Saturday 8th August.

(Photos: Louise Stickland/Charlotte Wilson)

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