SGM P-5s Breathe Life into Art Zone Installation for Roskilde Festival

	Art Zone installation for Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Photo: Kim Matthai Leland

Jakob Kvist, who is behind the light design on Art Zone, was on the lookout for a weatherproof wash light with deep saturated colors and high output for this installation. The SGM P-5 LED wash light met all of his demands.

Roskilde Festival 2015, held in Denmark, had a popular new edition of its Art Zone success from last year. In an area of approximately 6,400 qm, located on the left side of the renowned Orange Stage, this year's Art Zone consisted of some very interesting architectural installations that were stunningly lit up. 5,000-10,000 festivalgoers each day visited the site to get a different experience.

The Dutch architect duo, consisting of Marco Zolos and Robbert van der Horst, once again carried out the design for Art Zone. The young aspiring Danish lighting designer, Kvist, subsequently added the powerful lighting expression: "I got contacted by Johan Kjærulff Rasmussen, responsible for Art Zone, in May. At that time, the building structures and concepts were already at their final design stage. I came in very late in the process, and added lighting in between the spaces and gaps in Marcos and Robbert's structures."

The two architects' conceptual idea behind Art Zone was a theme based on open and enclosed structures. Kvist wanted the light to reflect exactly these to opposites. Using LED light, he therefore designed the light to be welcoming to the guests in the three open structures. "It gave a sense of movement, inviting the guests to fool around and go silly. And it worked!" Kvist states. On the other hand, he worked with an inside-out solution for the enclosed structures. Here he made sure the light from the LED lamps came out intravenously from the gaps in the structures, which gave them a more introvert look and feel.

When asked what kind of emotions, he wanted to evoke among the visitors, Kvist emphasizes that working with festival installations is very much different from working with a gallery exhibition; "You have to amplify the visual effect quite dramatically, in order to have the guests take note of your work. Luckily, the tasks I've received have always been quite spectacular, so I haven't had that problem," he says with a big smile on his face. His ambition was for the guests to embrace the light with the open and enclosed theme of the structures. In that sense, he wanted the light of the open and enclosed structures to represent openness, happiness, and movement, and the enclosed structures to represent reflectiveness, afterthought, consistency, and perspective.

Kvist integrated 18 SGM P-5 LED wash lights into two of the installations. "I wanted to use the P-5 because of its superior abilities in utilizing a wash light. I wanted a weatherproof high output wash light with deep saturated colors. In that sense, the P-5 is everything you could wish for in a wash light," he reflects and continues: "I would like to highlight the deep colors of the P-5. They are much richer than your normal RGB fixture. The white LED enables you to make beautiful pastel colors, and the fact that you can daisy chain the fixture, makes setting up and taking it down, very fast and convenient." Since it was an outdoor installation in a festival environment, heavy rain or worse is what you can expect when the lights are standing outside for a whole week. Kvist therefore underlines that the P-5's IP65-rating was a crucial feature, when he was selecting lighting fixtures for the Art Zone project. "We didn't have any problems with them, whatsoever," he contentedly concludes.

He has previously used the SGM X-5 LED strobe for live productions: "Its high intensity and low power usage and daisy chain features were the best arguments for using this particular fixture. I haven't had the chance to use any other SGM products, but I find the G-spot and LT-100/200's to be very interesting products."

The Art Zone installation has received much attention from both the Danish and foreign art press. It will definitely be interesting to follow Kvist and his future career as a promising star within lighting design.