We were hired by GE lighting to light their tradeshow booth for Lightfair 2003 in NYC. We were brought in late in the design; the entire tent structure had already been approved and was already in fabrication. From the discussions with the client, we knew there was going to be a problem with how they wanted to light the tent based on the amount

of space allowed, but we didn’t know how big until they sent us a sample of the fabric.

The original plans allowed for lighting the fabric from the ground on the inside, with about 2 feet of space to place the fixtures AND it was to be animated. With a wall height of 8 to 16 feet, the 2 feet allowed was far below the minimum needed. What we learned once we received a 5 foot square sample of the fabric was that it was a stretch fabric. DOOM! While the fabrics look great when projected ON, they act like a theatrical scrim when stretched and lit from behind, allowing the viewer to see right through. In this case what you would see is the back of the display walls and the lights themselves.

After several in-house mockups, we decided that a full scale mockup should be done to be sure that which approach would work. Once on-site at the fabricator’s shop, we mocked up 4 different ideas for lighting the fabric. None of them were acceptable. The basic problem with trying to light the tent from behind and from the ground was that as you walk around the tradeshow (and in everyday life), your eyes are mainly on the horizon or below. This means that any lights on the

floor would be right in your line of sight. In each mockup, you looked right at the lights behind the fabric, and it wasn’t pretty. Then, while listening in on a marketing conversation, we happened across the key: The Awards Poster for the GE Edison Awards.

What an inspiration – and none too late, we had already lost a whole day. They approved an emergency rental package for the next day to see if the idea would work. It did, with some minor modifications to the setback distances and locations. We decided to light the bottom of the tent with a linear chain of fluorescents and use ceiling to splash color washes to mimic the awards poster. The ceiling location had an added benefit of allowing us to get farther away from the tent face.

As this was the GE LIGHTING booth, all the lamps used were GE lamps, however, to added benefit, we were able to highlight three of their newest products. One the spinning GE logo, two, the blue entry tunnels and three the general area lighting. The spinning logo was lit with three brand-new (in fact these were final release engineering samples) 150 watt, par64 CDM lamps in a narrow spot. The Blue tunnels used GELcore leds in blue that highlighted the bottom rails of the blue entry tunnels. The effect was very energizing. One of the major new products that was being released was the new 20watt CMH lamp. To re-enforce the merchandising applications of this lamp, all the displays were lit, retail style with the new lamps. We had one MR16 fixture up for comparison and even we were sold!

With an approved design under our belt, the next challenge became figuring out how keep the cabling to a minimum, still allowing for enough animation, hiding three dimmer racks and getting it installed by the union at the Javits convention center within the 4 days allowed. We spent two days at local supplier to prep everything, using lamp bars and pre-marked cables.

After 4 non-stop days and sleeping on the floor, the last step was to animate all the lighting. Using Horizon on a PC with a DMX interface, the color washes and the white streaks were divided into three separate groups. These groups were then set up on a random chase with slightly different timing to keep it amorphous.

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