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Chroma-Q Color One 100 Successfully Illuminates Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Light (Again)

Chroma-Q Color One 100 Successfully Illuminates Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Light (Again)

February 13, 2017 06:13

Located along the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, Ontario, is the Toronto Power Generating Station. Designed by architect E.J. Lennox, this Beaux-Arts style building features arched windows, pedimented doors, finely crafted statuary, plinths and pillars. Its unique style and textured envelope make it a perfect canvas for an illumination project. 

Chosen as one of many showcase locations for the Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Light, Lighting Designer, Eric Bartnes (Bartnes and Associates) devised a plan that would bathe the building in just the right amount of dazzling light for the event.

The Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Light is one of the most enchanting illumination festivals in North America and attracts over one million visitors to the area during the months of December and January. First held in 1983, the aim of the event is to transform Niagara Falls into a kaleidoscope of lucid color and light.

Lighting a building’s exterior is a common act for most lighting designers, but Eric’s challenge, in addition to attractively illuminating the station’s facade, called for the execution of an un-manned installation that would prevail in a hostile weather environment for the Sound2Light show.

Eric chose to utilize the innovative technology of 72 Chroma-Q Color One 100, a premium performance LED that provides a smooth and homogenized reveal against the building’s intricate exterior details.

The Color One’s expansive RGBA color-mixing palette delivers outstanding color blend across the spectrum- including deep-cold blues, red-hot lava looks and super-soft pastels, as well as a complete range of whites, and its beam virtually eliminates the color separation and shadows synonymous with LEDs.

It’s also tough.

The Color One 100's technology is encased in cast machined aluminium and is IP20 or IP65 rated.

“Three years outdoors, no service calls,” states Eric as testimony to the fixture’s brawn.

In addition to the 72 powerful fixtures, a Jands Vista console was used for control, programming and playback.

“There is a four minute custom music soundtrack and the solution was using the Jands Vista. After programming the light show to the soundtrack, we automated the Vista to loop the file on 5 minute intervals,” said Eric. “Starting at 5 pm daily, the show runs until midnight, where the final cue sends a command to drive all lights at 5%.”

Slightly downstream from the Toronto Power Generating Station is the William B. Rankine Generating Station (Rankine Generating Station), another location Eric was tasked to illuminate for the event.

As a result, Eric designed an incredible architectural light display using 46 Color One 100s (IP65).

“This is a multi-year roll out of the lighting of this iconic building,” said Eric. “This year the client asked to purchase some fixtures to run stand alone, and invest in control down the road. The request was for 40 Color One fixtures skimming the building on random rainbow. The immediate problem was that any and all photographs of the building would look the same. The solution was to group the fixtures in three quadrants and utilize the Master/Slave feature on the fixtures.”

For Color One 100 downloads, specifications and product videos visit: www.chroma-q.com/products/color-one-100.asp

For information about Jands Vista visual lighting and media control visit: www.jands.com/lighting/

Bartnes and Associates is a Toronto based lighting design consultancy. For a view of their installations visit: www.bartnes.com/Bartnes_and_Associates/Home.html

Project: Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Light
Location: Toronto Power Generating Station & William B. Rankine Generating Station, Niagara Falls, Ontario
Product: Chroma-Q Color One 100 LED, Jands Vista Console
Client: Ontario Power Generation
Designer: Eric Bartnes, Bartnes and Associates
Installer: Eric Bartnes, Chris Lacelle, Steve Shear, Mike Gemes
Music Composer: Jake Vanderham
Supplier: Shear Display


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