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Thomas Gerdon brings Nature One into the light

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:20

Nature One. Photo: Marc Heimendinger


This year Germany's biggest electronic music festival was inspired to attract massive crowds, with more than 65,000 visitors attending Nature One.

For four days, top acts like Robin Schulz, Paul van Dyk, Sven Väth, Adam Beyer, Laidback Luke and Sander van Doorn played at the open air Pydna missile base in Kastellaun. In total over 350 DJs and live acts performed on 23 stages.

It was a feast for lighting designers, and in particular Thomas Gerdon. He designed the lighting for the glowing pyramid in the large open-air area. This relied on technical service provider, schoko pro from Wiesbaden, who supplied 150 GLP GT-1 heads, and around 100 more fixtures from GLP’s impression series. It was the sixth time Gerdon had designed the lighting for Nature One.

“This year we started completely from scratch, with the dimensions and the basic idea of the floor slightly adapted to accommodate the increasing number of spectators," said Gerdon. "We wanted a structure that did not restrict the view of the stage — it was larger than in previous years to further enhance the long-range effect. For this we needed a large number of reliable hybrid fixtures — and we found what we were looking for with the GT-1. Meanwhile, the X4 provided its usual high quality voluminous light.”

He continued, "We have worked frequently with GLP products for many years and have always been satisfied — but we are pleased to have got such an innovative new device as the GT-1. However, the bar set by the competition is also very high, and so such a hybrid needed to deliver a clean and rich, narrow beam, like a wide- open gobo.

“The GT-1 has fully met all our expectations. We especially enjoyed the animation wheel and the various prisms, while the gobos are really nice and versatile. The gobo animation effects are extremely fast,” continued the lighting designer, “while in Beam mode the fixture is tidy and has for its class a fairly small hotspot. Even with high zoom rates we really liked the GT-1 — the focus fidelity was really neat, requiring little adjustment … in fact we had great fun with the GT-1.

Gerdon adds that the enthusiasm for the biggest electronic festival in Germany continues unabated even after more than 20 years — with Nature One selling out in the last two years.

Besides the four principal floors operated by the organisers, various labels and club operators — from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium took over the other 19 club floors. These were situated in the bunkers of the former missile base. This presented either a club feeling between the 1-meter-thick concrete walls for a few hundred visitors, or a magnificent view over the festival grounds from the 10-meter-high bunkers.

Trance, drum and bass, techno, house and hardcore … the floors covered the entire spectrum of electronic music.





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