Carola kicks off her “My Show Summer Tour” in Motala with lighting effect technics from Visual act. She receives great reviews for her 22 concerts.

The Carola summer tour is the first use of the Visual act Control System to create lighting effects. The same components used in Visualact’s wagons and flying system are here used to operate over 300 relays, each controlling an individual lamp. The system can be updated over 30 times a second allowing for effects of any speed.

Effects are programmed in a simple editor and controlled by DMX.

The lamps in the Carola light wall are 40 watts each, however the system can control up to 1000-watt sources without modification.

Carola in "My Show Summer Tour" in Motala, Sweden

Carola in "My Show Summer Tour" in Motala, Sweden

 The Visual act Stage Control System is used to control the automated elements in Robin Wagner’s elegant design for “Chess”, currently playing in Stockholm. Visual act provides quick and simple programming along with dependable movement to ten flown projection screens and a large trap in the stage floor. 

The Swedish musical Chess opened Februari 23 2002 and played 325 times. The last performance was held June 15 2003. 495 940 people saw Chess during this period. 

Chess on Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest started with and idea from the designer, Iir Hermeliin. Seven 3-dimensional projection screens, or sails, to be flown over the stage. They should hang in almost any position, allowing the creation of different “rooms” for each song. How they would move, and what they would hang on, remained unanswered questions.

Visual act provided the solution. Each sail was hung on 3 lines driven individual motors. A forth motor moved the unit along a horizontal track the width of the stage. With Visual act the sail could be moved to any physically possible position along a predefined path.

Visual act’s partner, the scene shop Philipson & Franck, provided the sails themselves. They developed a method using glass fibre to fabricate a sail which was light in weight, suitable for back projection, and stiff enough to hang in any position.

The lighting director Per Sundin used the new Catalyst system from High End to project on the sails. The combination of Visual act and Catalyst allowed moving pictures to be places around and above the performers in virtually any position.

Eurovision Song Contest 2002, Tallinn, Estonia

  
The world premier of Katarina Frostenson’s “Kristallvägen” showed how effectively Visual act wagons can be in a spoken drama. The designer, Tomas Franck, placed furniture – a sofa, piano and a cupboard – on three wagons. The movement of the wagons was so quiet and smooth that the room changed in full view, even as the actors performed on and around the wagons. 

The production was a great success, with the reviews ecstatic over the fantasy, clarity and virtuosity of the result.

The Gothenburg Post: “Pia Forsgrens production extends the drama’s theatrical limits. … it has become a production based on choreographic precision, where the self propelled, dancing furniture take active part.”

Svenska Dagbladet: “Pia Forsgren uses the room, static, but in motion like a carousel with sofas, to hide and to emphasize, to allow the actors to observe and be observed, aware or unaware, Yes, this is exciting, sometimes very exciting.

Kristallvägen 2002

Kristallvägen 2002

www.judiskateatern.org

Plasa 2002

 
The Visual act Stage Wagon presentation at the Plasa Expo in London concluded with three stand awards: The Award for Best stand under 50 square metres went to Visual act (C6). The judges were struck with the stand design and colour scheme and impressed with the moving elements of the stand display.  

www.plasa.org