Joining the likes of the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Theatre Company and most of the country’s leading theatre company’s and venues, the Adelaide Festival Centre has installed ETC lighting consoles from Jands .
It is also the first venue in Australia to receive an ETC Eos Titanium ‘Ti’ – ETC’s flagship lighting control console.
The many software and hardware features of the Ti add to its award-winning Eos-family functionality, including large-format, articulating multi-touch displays, a multi-touch encoder display, a solid-state hard drive and the ability to work with Magic Sheets.
Adelaide Festival Centre head lighting technician Nathan Luscombe says, “It was time to replace our aging Strand 500 Series consoles and ETC was the obvious choice.
“Strand used to be the industry standard for all the major venues in the country, but over the past few years, they have been superseded by the ETC EOS range. More and more shows coming through the Adelaide Festival Centre’s venues were using an ETC platform so the choice was simple to make.”
Built in 1973, the Adelaide Festival Centre was Australia’s first multi-purpose arts centre. It has two locations – the riverside centre and Her Majesty’s Theatre. These locations house six different venues – the Festival Theatre, Dunstan Playhouse, Space Theatre, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Artspace Gallery and the Amphitheatre.
Dunstan Playhouse has had the ETC Gio installed, while the ETC Ion has been installed in the Space Theatre. Festival Theatre – a large proscenium arch theatre – received the ETC Eos Ti, of which the lighting department is delighted with its performance.
“The Eos Ti is extremely similar to the Eos console, which we are familiar with, with main differences being in the layout of the console. However these differences make designing and programming easier particularly the built-in multi-touch screens that make it possible to display much more information,” Luscombe says.
Luscombe was particularly impressed with the speed of the console, most noticeable its boot time, which is possible with the new solid-state hard drive of the Eos Ti.
The new Magic Sheet functionality is another feature of the Ti, and the entire Eos family. It allows users to interact with both automated and conventional fixtures in an intuitive, visual way.
Magic Sheets have added the ability to reference the lighting plan on screen as well as selecting instruments, providing more flexibility to the programmer and the designer.