2017 was our second year producing the main stage at what is widely regarded as one of Australia's best parties and festival sites. Despite some challenging weather, a killer atmosphere prevailed created by some of Australia's leading stage builders and decor crews.
To set the vibe of the party we designed the stage as a Psychedelic Forest and played with scale, colour and perception, breaking all the rules and traditions we knew. With incredible LED wall coverage and two Barco F90 laser projectors, we had this stage fully wired for vision. We seamlessly integrated the vision and LX fixtures using all of the theatrical layers to create a cavernous band space. The custom double raked catwalk cut acutely across the stage allowed MCs to come down from the stage height of 1.1m to .5m and get super intimate with the crowd.
We further developed the idea of a theatrical balcony and created a dedicated changeover DJ position. Akin to something stumbled upon deep in the forest of fairy tales, "The Lab" took the form of an Art Nouveau Conservatory which housed an apothecary helmed by a fervent sorcerer cooking up all sorts of potions and concoctions to get the party started. This installation served as the catalyst for the narrative which drove the visual story line over the course of the weekend. We authored a vision brief based on the narrative then recruited VJ's animators and content creators to produce custom visuals for this theme. We then cued these clips on the media server so the story line unfolded over the course of the weekend.
This was produced as a collaborative effort between over a dozen contributing artists to support and realise the creative vision.
This stage exhibited asymmetry at its best. From the LED wall, decor, to structure this stage was presented as a twisting rabbit warren. We took the asymmetry to the next level with the LX plot de-pairing and placing fixtures up, down and tucked behind scenery so only the head was visible. Some big punch Mythos, Magic Panels and five Scenius Unico's provide 'big ass gobo washes' so it appeared this forest was alive and moving. Topped out with a hectic asymmetrical install of RGB LED Sunstrips in the roof (which were mapped through Resolume) and the shade lit with no less than 8 movers the LX operator was set to deliver an immersive psychedelic show!
We used both the level of the LED wall and lights to effortlessly sway the crowds focus from bands on the stage to pumpin' glitch-hop sets banged out from the lab allowing the audio techs to reset the stage and prep for the next act.
The thumping audio system from Full Throttle featured an asymmetrical delta sub array built from 9 Funktion1 F221's. At 1.7 m tall and over 4m wide we had to adjust the stage design and put in a dedicated scaff platform to accommodate this monster sub! The US corner of the offstage SL sub actually tucked under the flown Veros resulting in us decking out the bottom of the line array tower, which led to a super speedy smooth load in of the flown arrays. The delta was balanced out by a pair of 32's above which we put a platform which created a tertiary performance space. Cut to closing set of the party with Seth Troxler grooving out deep house cuts. Mean while a world champion body painter, perched among a 2m moth and a 1m snail in front of a 3m tall mushroom, paints an Avatar style dancing nymph under a dedicated UV light while a human disco ball moonwalks up and down the double raked video catwalk. This stage provided an experience that was truly psychedelic AF!