Ravinia Music Box

In the fall of 2016 long time client, BRC Imagination Arts asked Manny to join the team designing the new Music Box Experience Center at Ravinia Festival. Beginnings are always exciting and this project was no different. The Music Box project, led by Creative Directors Brad Shelton and Edward Hodge, contained elements of exterior building lighting, hospitality spaces, general circulation lighting that needed to connect to the pre-show experience and at the center of it all, a theatrical design for an immersive experience celebrating music and legacy of Leonard Bernstein. 

The jewel in the crown of the project is Bernstein’s Answer, a 10 minute immersive experience that asks the question of music’s impact and meaning. It explores the question by using music, projection, lighting and Bernstein’s own words & thoughts. Everything in the theater reacts to music and emotion. Manny explored ways in which the environmental and scenic lighting could lift and transform moments and the audience’s perception of the those moments. 

As the experience explores the topic of music’s power to transform and move people’s emotions, so too does the physical space of the theater itself transform. Projection and light both begin the show being very focused within the theater’s proscenium. As the show opens up with Bernstein’s music, so does the theatrical fabric of the show with projection and light expanding to surrounding the audience. It was a delight to design Bernstein’s Answer, a show that has such powerful music at its core, with all the team members at BRC. Lighting and music are two artistic expressions meant to dance with each other and on this project that dance helped build the emotional core of the show’s message. 

For the exterior of the building there is a bar space that sits on top of the lobby and pre-show spaces. Manny and BRC Creative Director Edward Hodge began by considering how the building would be seen from the lawn of the festival where so many of the guests experience the concerts from. The bar was always conceived as an island of color floating on top of the building. For the bar there were two major criteria. First, that the color all came from concealed sources. Manny wanted the impact to be from the color environment and not the point source of the light itself. The second major gesture was the ceiling of randomly laid out tiny aperture downlights that created the low level circulation lighting. Manny carefully considered both the location of each fixture but also their random circuiting combination to allow a carried intensity level from the point sources without a perceived pattern.

Rounding out the project was the gallery and circulation lighting. The BRC design concept for the whole building was centered around a design language of asymmetrical lines and shapes, and in the gallery and pre-show spaces Manny designed a track system that echoed that language.

The joy of the Music Box Experience Center for NYX was that is a complete project that encompasses the entire theater building, requiring many design skills and disciplines to come together to make for an impactful experience for the guests. It was a joy to be on this team.

Ideas & Inspiration an Exploration of Creativity Webinar

Join Abbey on Oct 13th as she leads a @Martin_Global webinar... Ideas & Inspiration an Exploration of Creativity. The webinar starts at 1pm central and you can register now.

https://harman.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1ylc-rVNQo-IKVmIMOSXrQ

Acura RDX

This year's auto show season for Acura was dedicated to the launch of the RDX and Manny was again asked to design the lighting for the press conferences.   First with the reveal of a concept in Detroit and then with the reveal of the production car in New York,   This year also marked the debut of a new design for the Acura booth.   It features a transparent LED Display creating a space between the screen and wall of the booth that is an ideal location for a car reveal.

Our client, Spinifex, made wonderful use of the layers this screen provided by using projection on the back wall and placing the reveal car in between the two layers of content.  Then as the reveal played out content pushed forward and backward through dimensional space with light playing out on the car in the space in between.

We lit the up stage car in layers as well.  Both from above as well as thin strip of animated light at the base of the car right up against the screen.    This allow us to tease out details of the car during the revel video.

In New York, we created a series of 8' tall pixel sticks that created the base of reveal.   Having this scenic element with pixel driven light allowed us to create an reveal that captured rhythm and mood of the reveal music and also focus on a visual representation of speed.  

Both reveals showed off the complexity that Spinifex likes to build into new car launches.  Both were a study of media and light playing out through multi planes of space.

Power Of Rock Experience

After over a year of design development The Power of Rock Experience opened to the public at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this past July.   Manny Treeson was invited to design the lighting for the whole experience, created, designed, and produced by BRC Imagination Arts.   We were thrilled to be on the team for such an exciting project.

From the beginning of the process, BRC's Creative Director Christian Lachel desired to take the guests on a journey immersing them in the music.  Christian knew everyone has memories and emotions triggered by one song or another.  From a lighting point of view, we wanted to have the whole experience be active and fluid; that all the lighting would be an extension of the music bathing the guest in an immersive environment driven by both beat and mood.   

The theater was created to embody all of these ideas.   We started with the film, directed by Jonathan Demme, that celebrated the legendary performances at the induction ceremony and concert.  

The film utilizes tracking screens with dynamic media locked to them.    Scenic lines made up of video strips outline the space.  We approached these video strips from a generative point of view.   The content is generated in Touch Designer  in real time and manipulated by the lighting console.  This afforded us the ability to treat this scenery dynamically and manipulate it along with the entire lighting rig.

Once the the film concludes, the guests walk out through a curved ramp that rises from the 3rd floor to the 4th around the outside of the theater.   To make this exit more dynamic we created a tunnel of volumetric video that was cued to While My Guitar Gently Weeps.   A rotating vortex of light and pattern pulls the guests  down the hallway.  We wanted the guests to feel that the entire space was directly connected to the music and that they were completely immersed within it.

Upon exiting the hallway, the guests are treated to an exhibit of artifacts from the performances that were featured in the film.  

Nordstrom Light Weave Installations

Abigail worked with Co-Designer Bob Bonniol, of MODE architectural, to design volumetric light sculptures for the flagships store escalator cores of luxury retailer, Nordstrom.  Working for the architectural firm Callison, and for Nordstrom; they designed and implemented four elegant LED Light Weave installations which have been installed in the Vancouver, Chicago, and Toronto stores.

The Light Weaves are comprised of breathtakingly light weight custom copper strands which drop 20’ to 60' from the ceiling.  Individually controlled custom LED nodes are arrayed in a regular grid allowing for a dimensional and volumetric display of programmed patterns.

Abbey and Bob created a suite of evolving and varied ambient programming, which modulates with time of day to reflect the energy levels of the store environment.  Additional programs were created for holidays and special events.

The custom Light Weave LED sculptures were manufactured by Tait Towers, and installed by systems integrator 4Wall.

Phish

Abbey was invited by Chris Kuroda to collaborate on a co-design for the current Phish tour - An amazing opportunity to work together on design for this legendary band and their incredible live performances.  The goal creatively for introducing and incorporating a video element into the Phish touring show was that the lighting and video function as parts of one visual system.  

The production design for the show consists of a clean, simple architectural environment created by the video screen surfaces.  A low semi circular video wall encloses the band and defines their performance space.  During the first set a slim, stage wide, rectangle of video screen hangs above the stage;  echoing the minimal, linear array of the floor LED.  The lighting for set one is trimmed low, close to the screens, creating an intimate environment.

At the start of the second set the flown screens pull apart and and deconstruct into an array of irregularly spaced individual tiles.  The lighting positions travel out at the same time, opening up the shape of both systems; enlarging the scale of the performance environment and creating a flow of areas of negative space.  

In the first parts of the show the video content is more spare, and minimal, often filling the entire area of the screens in overlapping, shifting planes of color - to establish the architecture of the set, cleanly present the band in the performance environment, and introduce the visual element of the screens into the show.  In the later parts of the show both the physical environment and the content evolve to be looser, more broken up, less flat, and more active.  The images travel more across the screens; sometimes distorting and redefine the shape and space. 
The content design takes advantage of the Roe Hybrid tiles, which provide both a medium and a high resolution surface in one plane.

Lighting and video are operated completely improvisational by Chris from one console.  The video content was created by Abigail and Dan Scully.  The incredible expanding screen was provided and design engineered by Tait Towers.