Clay Paky at Geneva Festival of Light

From November 26 to January 2, Geneva illuminated its lakeside promenade for the tenth edition of the Festival Arbres et Lumières.

One of the artists invited, the Italian director and lighting designer Simona Braga proposed an eight-minute son et lumière with music and recitation. Le souffle du monde is a sequence of projections and lighting effects that develop the basic themes of the festival, which are nature and light. The projections have been achieved using high-resolution photo gobos for the graphic designs created by the author, using Clay Paky metal gobos to produce some of the effects, such as the woods and fog which seem to come from the lake and disperse with the sunrise.

Some of the photo gobo projections are perfectly focused, whereas the author has chosen to blur others slightly for artistic reasons. In order to have a sufficient variety of effects, Braga has also made extensive use of the iris and prism.

The lighting effects are projected onto four fan-shaped screens between 52.5' and 65.5' from the ground. The Alpha Profile 1200s have been hung on a tree in front of the screens, at a height of about 46', and protected against inclement weather using a spacious wood and Plexiglas "box" that allows pan and tilt movements. This year's edition has been marked by bad weather, especially snow and ice, which has transformed the city's landscape. The violent gusts of wind delayed the installation of the screens, but the hard wearing Clay Paky lights have allowed the show to be staged even during the most critical days, with ice forming unexpected shapes on the branches.

Braga programmed the 76 light cues on a computer in order to achieve perfect synchronization between fade in and fade out and the musical score. Lighting desk operator Federico Selva programmed the show on a Compulite Vector during the installation, then transferred everything onto a Vector Node for automatic loop reproduction for the whole duration of the event.