The Light Show for the 125th Anniversary of the Rensselaer Student Union was the largest and most exciting show I've yet taken on. With this project I was given a great deal of creative freedom and a budget of $5,000 - I had been noticed by the Director of the Union for my work on weR BRIGHT. I began work on the project over the summer of 2015.
By the start of the 2015 school year, I'd assembled my team of technical collaborators and had gotten in touch with Phillips Lighting, who helped me find a Varilite dealer near RPI to rent lights from. We ran test after test and met with different groups on campus to arrange for whatever support we needed. Finally, I helped kick off the ad campaign and wrote out all the sequences for the show.
I reasoned that the best way to advertise our big show was to give proof of its quality with some smaller ones, so we ran five-minute shows nightly for two weeks leading up to the final show at the Gala. The video you see above is of the Gala Show from November 14th.
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As you can see in the video, the show had a sort of enchanting effect on the audience and even on me - there was something of all of us in that montage and that really made it special. It was tough to see it finally end.
Over the course of working on this show, I met so many members of the community, from the man who runs the Jumbotron at our football games to the head of the Lighting Research Center. I learned about advertising, tackled traffic safety problems, tested projectors, and made speeches.
Here's hoping that this new tradition of ambitious shows and celebrations will only grow as the years go by- it was an incredible blessing to have been part of this one.
To see the nightly shows all in a row, the Gala show, or a closer look at the Gala show window montage, follow this link to my Google Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4DPj_YocYaCakZlUlBDMVBHZlk