deployments and tips for decorating

Telabeams.

"The only thing better would
be an acid trip."
-unknown crowd member.

One nice thing about nightclubs is-if you really want decent lighting effects- most of what you need is already there.

None of that mucking
around for the right equipment, rental agreements, lease terms, power checks and other assorted nonsense that gets in the way of making a decent decorating job look even better. Which is probably why I stick with Raves and Nightclubs exclusively at the moment.

Although it's been covered in publications like Images, specific types if lighting apart from spots and gels haven't really been commented on. Which makes me wonder if anyone else has even tried to work with some of the most common lighting systems used in nightclubs today.

One of the most prevelant is the Telabeam System. For those who don't know-or didn't know what they might have been watching on the weekend, They are the elongated servo and computer controlled spotlights that can display patters, and colors in a very large array and sequence themselves or with operator assists in virtually unlimited approaches.

The really nice thing is that with the variety of capabilities comes an arsenal of potential for any balloon decorations that you would want to deploy in such a space-and provides an additonal selling point on the marketing end.

In this case-for a new year's eve bash-I took advantage of a 10 perimeter spot arrangement after watching some of the pro- grams that had been put though their paces over the course of a number of weeks previous to the installation.

One of the typical programs was a full room, dual color "sweep". Where each spot would speed over 1/4 of the room in a 90 degree arc before handing off to the next corner bank of spots. By relaying over a the room in full-a single monochromatic sweep could be alternated after a previous color. The appearance was that of the room having two full colors swirling a complete cycle followed by the next color in the sequence. The speed of the cycles can be fast. Fast defined as 10 full room sweeps a second.

I decided to errect a series of free-floating walls supported by 3 foot helium rounds all clear latex in color since clear-jewel- tones pick up and exhibit the colors they are being struck by.

By encirling the dance floor with 25 foot columns placed side to side the beams illuminated the columns during the sweeps and the standard programs as well as the balloon drop nets. When the cycles reached 10 per second-placed in context to your average 150 bpm soundtrack, the end result was something that could result in motion sickness as one found themselves in the center of a funnel of color.

Images of the club and the columns can be found in the gallery section of the site.

Other club effects include projection surfaces for video projectors, and walls for Glo-Beams which not only can run programs similar to the TelaBeam systems but run full photographic image patterns as well.

The next project I hope to wrap up experiments to involve full video on exploding 6 foot balloons. Hopefully to Vietnam War footage.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Send any of your decorating
stories/tragedies/exploits/sucesses/observations
for posting to Montgomery Gabrys/mgabrys@netherworld.com