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For all who registered for a band, the user would tap that band on the tower and would then be able to check in to that location, take a photo or send a message to Facebook friends who had also registered for an Insider Band. That data could then either be stored and accessed the following week or posted immediately to Facebook. If a user’s phone died or had poor reception, all he or she had to do was visit one of these towers to complete at least some of the actions they would have normally performed with their smartphone, such as find friends or check in at a location, without worry. As any test drive might end up, there were a few snags along the way, such as long lines to receive a functional Insider Band because of spotty Wi-Fi in the Esurance tent. But all in all, the project seemed to be pretty successful with 8,060 users who tapped 29,753

times and uploaded 4,780 photos throughout the festival. Smartwatches

Smartwatches have been around for a little while now, but this month, the industry releases two new models, the Samsung Galaxy Gear and the Sony SmartWatch 2, with Apple reportedly on their heels for a smartwatch release in 2014. Besides telling the time, how can these smartwatches really help at a music festival? The Sony’s SmartWatch 2 will have 300 apps released in tandem with the device itself, more than four times as many as Samsung’s Galaxy Gear at 70 apps. But if you’re a fan of checking in, tweeting, sharing Facebook statuses and uploading photos of all the action, both smartwatches will allow you to do that. The social network Path’s app also allows you to share photos, post locations and allow feedback, similar to its online site.

Have trouble keeping up or meeting up with friends? One of Galaxy Gear’s apps, Glympse, can enable someone to be tracked using the app, and you can figure out where that person is just by glancing at the watch’s screen. Those people will have to have the app on their smartphones too, but it could still come in handy. The SmartWatch 2 hasn’t released a list of many of its apps yet, but there’s a good chance that some of the apps you might normally use at a festival will be on there as well—if not in the future, possibly by next year’s summer fest season.

While the commercial version of Google Glass is still not yet available, developers are creating more and more apps that may eventually be of some use to festival goers—as long as they can keep the glasses on while jumping around in the crowd. Imagine a Google Glass app that allows you to pull up live Twitter updates from other users about a festival set while it is actually happening. Or a map app that pulls up the trackable locations of your friends onscreen and directs you exactly to the spot they’re at. Or a camera that snaps a picture with every hard blink, hands-free. The possibilities are endless as Google Glass slowly becomes a reality. App developers will assuredly come up with uses beyond our wildest fest tech fantasies, and it will be exciting to see where it goes in the coming years. Wearable technology for music festivals is still in its infancy,

but it shows great promise. Let’s wait and see what tech companies have in store for us by summer fest season 2014.

for years. However, it was exciting to take it to the next level at Ultra and really work toward the festival'’s amazing production standards and reputation. Photo Rudgr.comLD: What was the design philosophy going into the project? RN: When I first saw the stage design, the first thing that really struck me was the need to create a

ighting design that would support the awesome geometry of the structure. There are so many great features of the structure: the overall shape, the hundreds of smaller pyramids that make it up, the central archway, and the giant Ultra logo, to name a few. When it's dark, it becomes lighting’s responsibility to make sure that this great design keeps its shape, size, and definition. I worked closely with Bruce Rodgers, Tribe inc, and James Klein Events to ensure that every part of the structure took light as best as it could. Together we looked at different

finish options for everything, right down to the acrylic used in the DJ booth logo, to make sure it really came alive with lighting. The final design had lights literally everywhere; there were fixtures covering the logo, all the way across the arch, and we had a moving light on every single one of the 176 pyramids that make up the structure. A glance at the Ultra schedule reveals six days of non-stop lighting—up to 12 hours per day—and the knowledge that many partygoers would spend a good chunk of the six days standing in front of the main stage. I had to abandon my usual mindset of keeping fixture types to a minimum to give the stage a massive array of effects, positions, and fixtures that would keep people guessing what else we had to reveal. We didn’t reveal almost 100 fixtures until day two of the festival, and there were a few effects we kept our sleeve just for weekend two.

I had to also be mindful that several artists would bring their touring LDs along, so it was important to keep some elements consistent with other festivals. I kept a large number of spot and wash fixtures in fairly traditional positions inside the main stage, and then placed groups of these fixtures out on the structure to ensure that the lighting would always be spread out across the full width of the stage. All of this led to the creation of a lighting design that has well in excess of 1,000 intelligent fixtures, which also checked off the requirement that the lighting looked huge! LD: What others were involved in the lighting team? RN: Back in Sydney, we had four of our staff involved in the preproduction and

paperwork. Alex Grierson is my associate designer and programmer who did a great job managing everything from visiting LD requests through to getting the visualization files setup and operational. On site, two of us operated the shows and also assisted other LDs with programming when they required it. I’m a firm believer that EDM events don’t allow for the traditional lighting designer/operator relationship, where the person who designs the rig isn’t the one operating it. When a DJ can change tracks and cut the music completely in a split second, the lighting has to react instantaneously. With Alex and me involved since day one with

the design and then physically operating the consoles in the day, we can react quickly to these changes. Furthermore, as the designers, we know the reasoning behind every light’s placement and how to get the best out of each fixture, so these reactions do have a sense of artistic reasoning behind them. It’s certainly a demanding and draining way to operate, where we are not just producing paperwork, but also programming thousands of cues, listening to around 50 different artists, and also finding time to assist other LDs, but I wouldn’t change a thing because we’re incredibly happy with the results. LD: Talk a little about your lighting rig and fixture choices for the main stage. RN: I specifically went out to try and give the stage a unique identity with the lighting, and a part of that was finding either new or obscure lighting fixtures that would breathe new life into the stage. I used 176 of the new Robe 100 Beam fixtures on

As I mentioned with our goals, there were a number of fixtures in the rig that we use as reveal effects—things that weren’t always visible to the audience but were instead revealed momentarily or for particular acts. I designed a wall of 40 [ICD] Elements KR25 panels interspersed with [Martin Professional] Atomic strobes, Robe 600 Washes, and Sharpys, which completely covered the rear of the automated doors. When the doors opened and rotated, this intense wall of light looked absolutely huge. On stage, we also had half a dozen Novalight Supernovas, which do a great enveloping beam look at select moments with their huge moonflower looks. (Check out Neville’s lighting plots here.)