October saw the United Nations’ 70th anniversary celebrated around the world with key global landmarks including the Empire State Building and the UN headquarters in New York, Tokyo’s SkyTree Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Athens’ Temple of Zeus and Edinburgh Castle, lit in celebration. The international Turn the World #UNBlue campaign aimed to unite global citizens by promoting the UN’s message of peace, development and human rights.
More than 25 Australian landmarks turned blue, including the Sydney Opera House, the MCG, Perth’s Bell Tower and Canberra’s Old Parliament House. However the most notable event was held at the iconic red rock Uluru, the only icon to have the UN logo projected onto it.
The event was held with the cooperation of the traditional owners – the Anangu people – and was the first time an image had been projected onto the rock face. The projection also marked the unofficial start of celebrations commemorating the handing back of the site to its traditional owners, 30 years ago.
Darwin-based Dreamedia were given the task of working out how to project the logo onto the famous rock and immediately Chris O’Brien, managing director of Dreamedia, called Show Technology for advice.
“They said that the Martin Professional MAC Viper was the correct light for the job,” said Chris. “Initially we only put our hand up to do a trial to see if it could actually be done as we had no idea. We decided we would cut up the logo into four segments and divide the portions into four MAC Vipers. We thought that would give us the most flexibility and firepower.
“Upon arriving in the desert, the guys decided to put one gobo into a MAC Viper to see how it would perform from 100 metres away and they were amazed to discover that just one MAC Viper absolutely nailed it!”
Chris cannot believe that just one MAC Viper could deliver so much punch and that the other three Vipers were not needed at all.
“Honestly, a lot of the credit must go to the Show Technology team as it was their technical team that really did the math on this project,” added Chris. “We knew we needed the logo at least 45 metres wide as the viewing platform for all the dignitaries was two kilometres away.”
For the trial Dreamedia sent down half a truck of ground support, chain motors and four MAC Vipers but in true Australian style, the solo MAC Viper was fixed to the back of a Ute. Control was a MA Lighting International dot2 XL-F.
The images show the set up and testing for the project.
