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Thursday, November 16, 2023
‘First drone show to tell story of evolution’ to be held in UK
www.avinteractive.com: Created by local experience company Yuup and drone light show specialist Celestial, the Evolution show can be seen at Wolverhampton Racecourse, on 14 December, and at the Seat Unique Stadium, in Bristol, on 21 December.
4 comments:
Abigail Lytar
said...
I have always been intrigued by sky art, and enjoyed seeing videos of it. I unfortunately have not had the opportunity to see it in person yet. This seems like a fascinating topic to choose for sky art. I hope I will get to experience it. The piece has been designed to explore evolution starting with the big bang. It then leads the audience through life on Earth, single-cell organisms and dinosaurs to the diverse world today. An original soundtrack was also composed to be paired with this event. I am incredibly interested to see how they composed a drone show that visits all these events. Specifically what symbolism is used to convey the different themes in the story. I was also interested to learn that drone shows have to follow the same air laws that helicopters have to follow. Overall I am very excited to see what develops with this event.
I’ve thought a lot about technology like this for the stage, specifically in the realm of lighting design. I would love fixtures that intelligently know their position in space, and with the advent of wireless DMX connection technology coming onto the market, I think triangulation using these signals might be possible. If a fixture was able to tell where it was in space, like these drone clouds are able to, a lighting programmer could more efficiently program things like moving head fixtures and general looks, simply by choosing what sort of lighting they wanted at a specific point on stage, and letting the system figure it out on itself. Programming a lighting system could turn into something akin to the AI painting apps, that allow someone to paint swatches of color on an object, and then have the AI automatically texture it, but instead of texturing, it would create a look based on the notes of the scene. This could dramatically speed up the programming process, and would make for much quicker prototyping of cues.
I think drone shows are the coolest yet strangest thing ever. I don’t know why but I have always found them to be really interesting. I think for me it feels so futuristic and it blows my mind to watch videos of them. I always wonder how they work and then get overwhelmed by the thought and reflect on the experience of trying to fly drones and crashing them into trees. I think that it is especially cool that they tell the story of evolution. Although I wonder if there will be any backlash. I say that coming from a place that did not teach evolution in schools due to the religious environment I grew up in. I think it is an incredibly important story to tell and why not tell it through a drone light show. I hope that it is received well and people can enjoy the story and the technology used to tell it!
While I like the idea of a sky show with drones, I do have a couple of questions. I have seen one drone show, more like an attempt at a drone show. And honestly, it did not go that well. I do not know too much about technology, so I do not know if the technology just wasn't there yet or if the drones weren't charged, or I don’t know what happened. But there were a couple of drones that just fell out of the sky, some didn’t sync up with each other and overall it didn’t feel cohesive. I would be curious to see what this show does differently. And I think it is an interesting challenge, a drone show about evolution but I am also curious to see what kind of drones they are using, and if it is a successful show, how much would it cost to achieve the goals because I am not sure you can do this without a lot of money. It seems like it will be well done because they have spent three years on it but it can just go wrong so easily because they are flying drones.
4 comments:
I have always been intrigued by sky art, and enjoyed seeing videos of it. I unfortunately have not had the opportunity to see it in person yet. This seems like a fascinating topic to choose for sky art. I hope I will get to experience it. The piece has been designed to explore evolution starting with the big bang. It then leads the audience through life on Earth, single-cell organisms and dinosaurs to the diverse world today. An original soundtrack was also composed to be paired with this event. I am incredibly interested to see how they composed a drone show that visits all these events. Specifically what symbolism is used to convey the different themes in the story. I was also interested to learn that drone shows have to follow the same air laws that helicopters have to follow. Overall I am very excited to see what develops with this event.
I’ve thought a lot about technology like this for the stage, specifically in the realm of lighting design. I would love fixtures that intelligently know their position in space, and with the advent of wireless DMX connection technology coming onto the market, I think triangulation using these signals might be possible. If a fixture was able to tell where it was in space, like these drone clouds are able to, a lighting programmer could more efficiently program things like moving head fixtures and general looks, simply by choosing what sort of lighting they wanted at a specific point on stage, and letting the system figure it out on itself. Programming a lighting system could turn into something akin to the AI painting apps, that allow someone to paint swatches of color on an object, and then have the AI automatically texture it, but instead of texturing, it would create a look based on the notes of the scene. This could dramatically speed up the programming process, and would make for much quicker prototyping of cues.
I think drone shows are the coolest yet strangest thing ever. I don’t know why but I have always found them to be really interesting. I think for me it feels so futuristic and it blows my mind to watch videos of them. I always wonder how they work and then get overwhelmed by the thought and reflect on the experience of trying to fly drones and crashing them into trees. I think that it is especially cool that they tell the story of evolution. Although I wonder if there will be any backlash. I say that coming from a place that did not teach evolution in schools due to the religious environment I grew up in. I think it is an incredibly important story to tell and why not tell it through a drone light show. I hope that it is received well and people can enjoy the story and the technology used to tell it!
While I like the idea of a sky show with drones, I do have a couple of questions. I have seen one drone show, more like an attempt at a drone show. And honestly, it did not go that well. I do not know too much about technology, so I do not know if the technology just wasn't there yet or if the drones weren't charged, or I don’t know what happened. But there were a couple of drones that just fell out of the sky, some didn’t sync up with each other and overall it didn’t feel cohesive. I would be curious to see what this show does differently. And I think it is an interesting challenge, a drone show about evolution but I am also curious to see what kind of drones they are using, and if it is a successful show, how much would it cost to achieve the goals because I am not sure you can do this without a lot of money. It seems like it will be well done because they have spent three years on it but it can just go wrong so easily because they are flying drones.
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