Slavic Bazaar Comes to Life with GVA Lighting

Every year, the highlight of the summer in Belarus, is the “Slavic Bazaar” International Music Festival held in Vitebsk.

In 2007, it became the focal point for the whole country!

The amphitheatre itself became the media for the inter-relationship that was the extravaganza of light and sound.

It started in April, when the Ministry of Architecture asked Walter industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of GVA Lighting of Mississauga, Ontario Canada, to design and install a colour changing lighting system to help revolutionize the image of the amphitheatre.

Timing was critical since the festival is held in July!

Within 2½ months, our team designed, built, installed and commissioned the 2182 custom PixeLED fixtures which illuminate the 7000 square meters of the matte white polycarbonate “paraglider , wing” shaped roof, designed by Valery Keskevich, Chief Architect of the Brest Design Institute

This roof became a back lit “screen” of changing colour.

Each fixture is one pixel of the “screen” and is individually addressed to allow virtually unlimited variation in light patterns, creating a monumental and dynamic light show.

To create an even more extensive spectacle, the Arch, which represents a bridge between cultures, was transformed into a colour changing “rainbow”.

For this application, the PixeLED in itself would not do the job, so a new fixture had to be designed.

With the installation 1440 of the SQL300-LED/RGB fixtures, controlled by the same system as the PixeLED, the transformation was complete!

Some technical information:

The PixeLED in this application used Red, Green and Royal Blue K2 Luxeon Diodes.

The SQL300-LED/RGB incorporated Nichia LEDs. The interior (or audience) side of the rainbow uses 30 tri-color diodes per fixture and the exterior side used 20.

The system is controlled by means of 604 commutators, 18 splitters, and one central computer.

Proprietary software allows for DMX addressing of each PixeLED and SQL fixture from the central computer. Each fixture can be remotely programmed and tested without the need for physical contact. The program can be run in manual or automatic mode.

Additional Images can be viewed at: Vitebsk Gallery

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For more information on the Slavic Bazaar Festival, visit http://festival.vitebsk.by/en/index.html