An Avolites Diamond 4 console was used to make Air’s recent show at the Eden Project in Cornwall a memorable one. 

It was the first time that the attraction’s famous Biomes had been illuminated with Pixel fixtures. Integrated into the live performance, they formed a beguiling multi-coloured backdrop to the stage.

As you’d expect with Dave Byars in the creative hot seat, Air’s lighting has its own touches of imaginative magic and visual invention.

The ‘specials’ element of the lighting rig – which toured everywhere including all the festivals - consisted of 14 Studio Spots, 8 James Thomas Pixelline LED battens and four Manfrotto stands on risers. It was designed with festival practicality to the fore – quick and simple to rig and wheel onstage – whilst also providing Air with their own unique set of visuals.

With the band primarily static onstage, lighting plays an important aesthetic role in the show. Byars wanted to keep the fixtures low, shooting through the band into the audience, kinetically transferring the energies and vibes of live performance from the stage into the crowd.

For control Byars chose an Avolites Diamond 4. He first used the console on one of the US legs, and then decided it was essential to have one on the rest of the tour. He needed a lightweight desk with compact dimensions that was on one hand easy to hoist up FOH festival towers, but that also offered plenty of creative power. The D4 was ideal from all perspectives.

He thinks the desk is “Brilliant”, particularly the way you can lay it out exactly as you want, and the fact that all faders can be used as playbacks, so you never run out of space or options. He also reckons the programming and playback functions are even easier than on previous Avolites consoles.

After the first site visit to the Eden Project, Byars was on a mission to light the Biomes – the opportunity of having a backdrop of several giant translucent spheres directly behind the stage was just too good to miss!

Chris Ewington of the James Thomas Pixel team arranged additional Pixel fixtures to be delivered to site for the Eden Project show, and Avolites supplied a second Diamond 4 console and another PixelDrive computer to control the in-Biome lighting.

Twenty-four PixelPAR 90 (A) architectural firings were positioned around the Tropical Biome, chosen for this location because of their solid wash type of light output, and their sturdy weatherization - not flinching in the 98 per cent humidity environment. 

The Temperate Biome featured less extreme weather, so the Pixelline 1044 battens were a good option for lightsources here.

An Avolites eDMX system was also used to control the Pixel fixtures. Scattered far and wide throughout the Biomes, conventional data cabling would have been unwieldy, time consuming and impractical.