TridonicAtco Chase Shadows
TridonicAtco has supplied its LED's for Chasing Shadows, a collaboration between Peter Pritchard of lighting design consultancy Pritchard Themis and his wife, textiles artist Eleanor Pritchard.
The genesis of the piece was the invitation to take part in the 2009 Art Biennal in Kaunas, Lithuania and the subsequent visits to the city to decide on a venue and to get a feel for the place. On these visits it was the old zoological museum in the centre of the city that held special allure with its with its huge collection of stuffed animals and a look and feel that was definitely still of the Soviet era. The museum has seen a drop in visitor numbers over the years and this was not seen as a conventional location for one of the Biennal exhibits, but the museum and Biennal organisers were extremely enthusiastic and provided a huge amount of support and encouragement to get the work realised.
The concept was to bring forest inside, for all the animals in glass cases around the museum. 66 illuminated ‘trees’ were created and hung amongst the antlers of the Grand Trophy Room; they represent a woodland, sealed and preserved ‘behind glass’. These ‘trees’ were made of made of paper that was burnt and worked into by Eleanor to resemble birch bark and then sealed into clear acrylic tubes.
A white Tridonic LED within the base of each tube delicately illuminated the paper and created a ghostly forest of light. A dynamic lighting programming system then gave life to the scene, with sudden flits of light, or slower, more menacing changes in light levels set to suggest a living presence, watching from the trees and moving around, but never fully glimpsed. The piece looks to explore the themes of escape and confinement that the collection evokes and the power of the imagination to see life in the inanimate.
"When it was clear what would be required to develop the piece in terms of technology we knew would need to use some of the brightest and best colour rendering LEDs available on the market. The Tridonic Gen 3 LEDs were the only sources I wanted to consider, to ensure we had near perfect colour consistency and high performance
The P211-3 LEDs from Tridonic are setting new standards in efficiency, luminous efficacy and quality of light. Their Chip-on-Board technology (COB) offers significant benefits in terms of optimum thermal management at high packing densities, compact designs and exceptionally long life. Precise process control for colour conversion leads to white light of high quality with defined colour temperatures within extremely narrow tolerances. Available in warm white (3,000K) neutral white (4,200K), daylight white 6,500K and specialist colour temperatures such as "gold"(2,700K).
The Tridonic LED P211-3 complete with lens driven at 700 mA proved to be the perfect solution for this project.
We approached both Tridonic and Emcon in Ireland to discuss the project and they were both extremely generous, together with the Arts Council England, in their support and sponsorship of the work. They have helped us realise the ambitious nature of this installation, providing the latest LEDs and helping us to build the tubes to the highest specification. This work was built to be very self-contained and it is our intention to see it installed in both the UK and Ireland next year."
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