Treading Lightly

Wulf Designs (Las Vegas) transformed a ballroom at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for a corporate meeting for the City Center, a property under construction in Las Vegas that extends between the Tropicana and the Flamingo. J.J. Wulf said the firm used 60 Color Kinetics (Boston) Color Blasts, which comprise acrylic panels with dynamic LEDs inside, as a backdrop for the welcome band. The venue walls were draped with fabric that incorporated 450 Versa™ TUBEs from Element Labs (Austin, TX).

The firm also decorated two themed ballrooms at the Bellagio for a New Year's Eve party for VIP guests of MGM properties, Wulf said. One room featured digital, sandblasted-acrylic chandeliers that projected images below. The images were sent from Catalyst servers.

The second room included a vertically mounted, interactive, pixelated, digital dance floor. Wulf said dancers in harnesses performed a choreographed routine on the dance floor that activated the pixels.

Track Lighting

Financier Carl Icahn donated $10 million toward the renovation of the track-and-field stadium on New York City's Randall's Island. In turn, the Randall's Island Sports Foundation decided to name it Icahn Stadium. SloanLED (Ventura, CA) used Osram Opto Semiconductors' (San Jose, CA) white Golden DRAGON™ LEDs to create 8-ft.-tall block letters for the stadium's new signage. According to Osram, a prototype test was conducted to determine whether to use LEDs or fluorescent lighting.


Red Glare

For a Times Square billboard spectacular that promotes Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom®'s latest attraction, Expedition Everest, Osram Sylvania (Danvers, MA) and Osram Opto Semiconductors equipped Walt Disney with their DRAGONchain® LED modules and Golden Dragon LEDs, respectively. The technologies were used to light up the glaring red eyes of the Yeti, the guardian of the Himalayan Mountains. The 30-in.-diameter eyes, which featured a dimming effect, were backlit by five DRAGONchain LED modules with the Golden DRAGON LEDs inside. The 9-ft. modules, installed in a spiral in each eye-socket base, were covered by a red, plastic lens. The technology created a glaring effect visible from 300 yds. away.

Groovy Grammys

|2011| (Austin, TX) provided 170 Versa TUBEs to create lighting effects for the Latin Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. Roca Video (Los Angeles) used the Tubes to illuminate the main arch across the stage, the center-stage arch and the verticals on both sides of the stage at the awards show. Eight Catalyst servers controlled all the technology, which included projection, LED columns, Tube LEDs and plasmas. The Tubes incorporated content based on each song, which create lighting as well as scenic effects.

Banking on LEDs

GE Lumination (Valley View, OH) outfitted Sydney, Australia-based Westpac Banking Corp.'s headquarters with its red Tetra™ XL LED lighting system for the company's "W" logo. The logo, which comprises roughly 730 ft. of the LED system, is included on all four sides of the building. According to GELcore, the system offers resistance against wind and vibration, which affect the building sides.