The latest addition to the Hakkasan Group, JEWEL Nightclub inside ARIA Resort &
Casino, has raised the Las Vegas entertainment bar once again, with an interactive
lighting design controlled by a custom Avolites system of integrated control desks
and Ai media servers.

JEWEL opened in May with a superstar-studded launch hosted by Oscar-winner
Jamie Foxx, hip-hop heavyweight Drake, electro turntable stars The Chainsmokers
and reality television sensation Kourtney Kardashian. To reinforce the luxury party
vibe, Hakkasan Group commissioned international sound, lighting and visual design
company AudioTek to “push the boundaries of technology” and create the ultimate
nightclub environment for Sin City’s elite.

The result is a high-impact, multi-sourced display based around the DJ’s moving
back wall of Ayrton Dream Panels, with both video and DMX surfaces, and Magic
Dot fixtures. This works alongside five ribbons of ROE Hybrid LED which circle the
main room and a video-mapped staircase leading to a mezzanine floor. AudioTek
lighting designer Andy Taylor chose Avolites’ Sapphire Touch, Tiger Touch II and
Quartz lighting consoles with Titan Net Processors and Ai Infinity R8 and S4 media
servers to control the complex set up.

Avolites’ lead software developer Oliver Waits helped design the custom system,
which links the video content, powered by the Ai media servers, to the lighting
control of the consoles, allowing everything to be controlled by a single operator.

Hakkasan’s Director of Video Production Ed Shaw worked alongside production
company Ne1co to design the video content, which is processed for the Dream
Panel fixtures by the Ai media servers. A large portion of the content was designed
to run on both sides of the panels using a DMX merge, resulting in a stunning dual
effect that mixes high-resolution content on one side with brighter but lower
resolution on the other as the panels are rotated. This content is reflected in the
visuals that run across the ROE Hybrid LED.

The content for the staircase, however, serves a different purpose. High quality 3D
visuals evoking a series of pathways and walls are run across the eight columns
and 15 stairs to highlight the architectural design of the space and encourage guests
to ascend to the mezzanine level.

Alongside the connection between lighting and video, Shaw and Hakkasan’s Vice
President of Entertainment James Algate wanted a way to automatically link the
music’s BPM to the lighting. The Avolites consoles needed to trigger effects in time
with the beat with no latency, allowing the entire shape and structure of the room
to morph in perfect time with the sound.

In response Waits wrote this capability into Titan v10.1, the forthcoming operating
system update to be released shortly after V10.0, adding a new dimension of
versatility to the entire console range.

Taylor explains that a further challenge was the sheer amount of data that the
system needed to deal with – it’s the biggest system that AudioTek has ever put
together, even taking into account concert touring. As a comparison, AudioTek’s
Managing Director Frank Murray points out that the most recent Radiohead tour
managed 46 Dream Panels on the back wall, each of which needed streaming data
for the video on one side and DMX on the other – Jewel uses 54.

“The support from the Avolites teams both in the UK and the US was fantastic,”
says Taylor. “From allowing us to take over the warehouse to test out gear and do
some valuable pre-programming, to them being on site in Vegas, they’ve been
supportive far and above the call of duty, and are continuing to be so. I know
they’ve kept in touch with the in house programmer, Jorge Tellez, to help him get to
grips with this demanding rig. This was an incredibly challenging job from both an
artistic and technological point of view, and it couldn’t have been achieved without
Avolites’ cutting edge products. It was a great leap of faith from management at
Hakkasan to approve the design and I don’t think it could have been achieved
without the incredible efforts of the team.”

For more information on JEWEL Nightclub please visit jewelnightclub.com