Case study about Kvant lasers being used effectively at Choral music festival in the ruins of an old abbey.
Laserist: Thomas Avisse – Lightdiction
Location: Abbaye de Villers-la-Ville, Belgium
Not only for me, was this event unique when compared to all other occasions where we see laser displays.
This was not an electronic music party or a big concert as such. This time I got involved in Choral music festival. The festival happened over three days, running for 6 hours each day.
The place this event was held at was very different from most others too - the ruins of the famous Villers Abbey, located in the town of Villers-la-Ville, Belgium.
The show production was not only about creating a nice beam show. I had to take into account a relatively calm atmosphere of the space and surroundings and match my laser display style to it.
Since it was a vast space to cover, the obvious choice would be two different live show stations. However, as I was the only laserist available, running two live shows at the same time was not possible. On the main stage, I operated the lasers live, performing an ambient atmospheric show. This performance covered an area that was about 70m long and 15m wide.
For the 2nd setup, I decided to do laser mapping of the ruins, which run continuously in a 3-minute loop. I mapped with lasers two different walls, from projection distances between 20 to 50 metres.
To achieve the above, I used the following four KVANT laser display systems:
1x Atom 20 to project the ambient atmospheric show at the main stage inside the Abbey.
1x Clubmax 6800 FB4 and 2x Clubmax 3000 FB4 lasers to laser-map the ruins.
On the above photographs, Atom 20 laser system is projecting a fan effect above the audience. To keep the effect minimalistic and kind of calm, I chose uniform colours and rather a larger pattern.
Also, the lasers were supposed to emphasise the artist and not to take the attention away from him - another reason I preferred using simple patterns.
I found the laser projectors from Kvant Lasers suitable for this job for quite a few reasons:
- As the event took place at Abbey ruins, this was not really an indoor job. For sure, I covered the lasers when it was raining heavily at times. But still, I needed reliable systems that could be used in outdoor conditions. And my Kvant lasers were just perfect for that.
- For the mapping part, I needed to run the lasers in the Auto mode, because I was at the main stage controlling live my Atom 20 system. Thanks to the built-in FB4 interface in each unit, I didn’t have to set another computer with Pangolin license to control these lasers. I just prepared the mapping in advance using Beyond Ultimate laser software and loaded the 3-minute show onto the FB4 SD card. This way, I could run the mapping show autonomously every night just by selecting the appropriate show file on each FB4.
- Not all lasers can always achieve good scanning accuracy and quality beam over distance. But my KVANT Clubmax 6800 FB4 and Clubmax 3000 FB4 are so great at this! Even when I was projecting from about 50 meters, the beams looked as sharp as if I was projecting from 5 meters away.
The audience loved the entire show. The atmospheric part was very immersive and nicely fitted the mood, while the laser mapping highlighted the architecture of the Abbey. This experience was completely new and probably surprising for the majority of attendees.
In conclusion, the lasers from Kvant made my life a lot easier at this event. They are incredibly versatile and reliable machines that will never disappoint you.
