The newly restored Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Biloxi, Mississippi, opened its doors on July 7, 2007 after suffering extensive damages from Hurricane Katrina. The revamped hotel is known for its collection of authentic music memorabilia and, now, for its sensational lighting effects enabled by Color Kinetics LED solutions and technologies.
Lighting designer Jon Champelli, President of SHOP 12, was tasked to capture the kinetic energy of the Hard Rock and create visual interest throughout the hotel. Champelli enlisted the help of 4Wall Entertainment, a leading international provider of lighting systems for theatrical, architectural, and marketing applications.
Together they selected the best light fixtures to meet their needs, and LED sources proved ideal. Aesthetically, they can generate millions of colors and dynamic effects without gels, filters or mechanical scrollers. Operationally, they require very little maintenance and produce little to no radiated heat. Color Kinetics' LED illumination systems thus provided the perfect solution to meet their criteria, and the vibrant resulting colors and effects are everywhere!
ColorBlast 12 Powercore fixtures illuminate the hotel's exterior. Arranged on poles that allow the LED power cables and DMX control signals to be combined, each pole has a specially fabricated support arm to hold 6 ColorBlast 12 Powercore fixtures. The poles are then directed to focus the light on the lower, middle or upper levels of the building. The LED light show has a changing color palette and nicely complements the famous eight-story guitar.
Champelli created video content including a constantly changing wave of colors, and he programmed the display to jibe with the other design elements throughout the bar and hotel. "The colors on the 'wheel spokes' are chosen to complement and in other times contrast with the LED wall," said Champelli. "Combined, these lights give the Center Bar a pulse and a tempo and establish a system to keep things moving without being a distraction."
In other areas of the hotel, such as in the buffet areas, iColor® MR g2 display different patterns such as an American flag motif with stars and stripes or random color changing sequences. A variety of equipment and video servers are used to store the content and feed the data streams to the LEDs and special programs have been incorporated to allow for the effects to be changed or updated as warranted.
Control and data distribution were critical to the success of the project. Buddy Pope, Senior Project Manager for 4Wall Entertainment Lighting, explains, "We designed conventional managed data networks using star topology, routers, and other features of typical office or industrial networks. Our approach was to use Ethernet and commonly used network wiring protocols to allow for the distribution and control of all of the LED systems in a reliable and seamless manner."
