Lightroom is a new home for artist-led shows in London's King's Cross in the UK, and is a joint venture of the London Theatre Company and 59 Productions.
59 Productions, renowned for its consummate mapping projects for the world’s most iconic buildings like the Sydney Opera House, the United Nations Headquarters, and award-winning theatrical works for the grandees of the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, offered an idea of an immersive space set to display concepts and arts.
The first exhibition of Lightroom was staged in collaboration with the most acclaimed British painter and photographer David Hockney. David Hockney is one of the few consecrated artists who welcome interaction with technology and the possibilities that new forms of media bring. Lightroom’s inaugural exhibition of Hockney’s art is titled Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away).
Lightroom is a four-storeyed purpose-built space, whose spacious interior of 1448 square metres presents an uninterrupted canvas for Hockney’s works providing a stunning 360-degree immersive experience embracing the works from across his artistic career. Floating over the walls, the paintings and photographs cast their spell on the audience, mesmerizing the visitors with the beauty and depth of Hockney’s artistry.
Blue I Theatre Technology, who deliver live events, have collaborated with 59 Productions for over a decade to supply solutions that successfully bring to life the creative ideas of the partner. For Lightroom, Blue I developed & delivered the onsite video system to power the exhibition. The project’s challenge was ensuring the massive content, distributed across the vast canvas played back smoothly. 59 Productions, a key client of Blue I, were specific about having a solution enabling uncompressed video signal delivery over a 10Gbps network.
For this heavy-duty task, Blue I chose Lightware’s UBEX AV-over-IP fiber-optical scaling system allowing 4K60 4:4:4 signal extension providing multistreaming on 10G Ethernet network with dual 10G links. There are 74 units of UBEX PRO20-HDMIF100 extenders and the matrix management UBEX-MMU-X200 * 2 units, deployed on the spectacular site of Lightroom. With the standard Ethernet switch as a crosspoint, a virtual matrix was created with UBEX extenders connected to the IP network as input and output endpoints, the virtual matrix is managed and controlled by the MMU.