Dark Mofo
Dark Mofo
Tasmania’s Dark Mofo winter festival is a ‘must see’ for anyone with a penchant for the avant-garde and darker spectrum of the arts. Fully funded and curated by the Mona museum, the critically acclaimed arts festival features a wide range of works from over 1000 contributors and is now in its 5th year.
Continuing the iy_project canon with renowned light artist, Chris Levine, and Eden Lab, ER Productions was thrilled to be part of the 6th iy_project installation at this year’s festival. The resulting piece, ‘iy_project 136.1 Hz’ is a breath taking, immersive laser and sound arrangement across two locations within Mofo’s Dark Park.
Chris worked closely with ER’s Tyler LeDent, programming and choregraphing the sound activated laser installation at the company’s studio in Dartford before the kit and crew left for Tasmania.
In an interview with Creators online prior to Dark Mofo Chris said, “There is a tight core team involved in the production, development and logistics of the work. We're so excited that Rob Del Naja from Massive Attack has started working with us and his flavours will become apparent in Hobart.”
During the show, full colour lasers flooded the Hobart skyline giving it a nebulous covering that has become synonymous with iy_project’s evolving body of work. With sunsets at 4:50pm and approval from the Australian Aviation Authority, performances arced over an hour and were run back-to-back between 5pm and 10pm during the festival.
An additional static installation was created by ER Productions in a warehouse space on the Dark Park site, which was connected to the dynamic external installation using lasers. Four Laserblade systems and one Tripan laser were engineered into the shape of a cross and projected through the warehouse, eventually converging with the outdoor experience.
Mona commissioned three 25m tall triangular towers, which rose like pylons into the sky. Aside from being striking works of art in themselves, the structures housed a line array sound system and a number of precisely positioned laser fixtures. ER Productions positioned three GLP Moving Head fixtures, one ARC Regus and two high powered, full colour RGBB scanning systems onto each tower, which projected a huge aerial pyramid between the towers and created the alternative nebular skyline. Designed around the principles of natural geometry, the internal laser pyramid is the exact dimension of the Pyramid in Giza.
A huge smoke and haze package of Unique and Viper deLuxe was specified to highlight the lasers, which was further complimented by natural haze emitted by a number of bonfires that were dotted around the park.