To celebrate Aarhus as European Capital of Culture 2017, Danish artist and lighting
designer Tine Bech from Tine Bech Studio in London developed We Believe, an
interactive lighting project taking place in Denmark and the UK simultaneously over a
period of ten days. Using SGM wash and floodlights, participants in Aarhus controlled
the facade lights at both Aarhus City Hall Tower and The Royal Danish Embassy in
London.

“We have been very pleased with the corporation with Tine Bech, who, from the
beginning, set extremely high demands for both colour mix and colour calibration. In
Aarhus, we mixed P-5s with P-2s, and we could not see any difference in neither color
mix nor dimming,’ said Christian Vigsø, chief executive officer of VIGSØ, who supplied
and installed the lights.

As part of the larger “playable cities’ initiative, We Believe was chosen in relation to
“Hidden Places’, established back in 2012, when Aarhus won the European Capital of
Culture 2017 title. The two-part project has focused, on the one hand, on forgotten
and hidden urban places such as roof terraces with re-thinking potential, and on the
other hand on mediation and citizen participation.

Perfectly in line with Hidden Places’ goal to involve citizens, creative lighting designer
Tine Bech’s We Believe light installation invited the public to participate in connecting
two cities, creating beautiful art through play from a hidden place in the city.

“I think it is interesting with a European corporation here in 2017, where Aarhus is
European Capital of Culture. We get a dialogue between two cities where art, design,
and participation go hand in hand. An opportunity the LED lights have given us,’ said
Tine Bech to a local newspaper.

Citizens were invited to control the facade lights from a control panel thoughtfully
placed at a hidden terrace at Karolinegarden’s rooftop. Programmed by Tine Bech
Studio, the unique control panel, designed as three retro arcade machines enabled
countless of colourful light variations on both the facade of Aarhus City Hall Tower and
The Royal Embassy of Denmark in London, which the participants could follow from a
live stream through a pre-installed webcam.

“We used three SGM P-5s on the top three floors and a mix of P-2s and P-5s on the
bottom three floors, which provided a beautiful illumination already 50cm from the
ground,’ said Vigsø about the illumination of Aarhus City Hall Tower, which used a
total of 47 luminaires.

Tine Bech Studio wrote a bespoke program to control all the light in a raw mode that
linked the two buildings with the interactions by audiences and visitors in the control
room. The lights were set in 10 channel (Intensity, Red, Green, Blue, White) mode
and controlled over DMX through an Enttec DMX Pro controller by NodeJS software
running under Linux.

“I was delighted to work with SGM and Vigsø. The P-5 provided just what I needed in
quality and colour range to illuminate a large surface evenly,’ said artist Tine Bech.

The control panel comprised of arcade machines designed by Tine Bech Studio
generated commands and sent them to a bespoke, encrypted, messaging service
running on a central server. Each lighting location listened for commands on the
messaging service and converted them to the required DMX or LED values. If any
lighting location lost contact with the messaging service due to network problems, the
remaining system would continue to run unaffected, and the local system would still
be able to process local commands.

Choosing Aarhus and London as the two participating cities is no coincidence. London-
based lighting designer Tine Bech grew up in Brabrand, just outside Aarhus. The two
chosen buildings represent power and are both designed by the beloved Danish
architect Arne Jacobsen. However, choosing two cities so far from each other required
easy remote control.

“In case of any malfunctions, we were not able to access either of the installations.
Therefore, we decided to add the SGM A-4 node, so we were able to monitor all
fixtures, update firmware, and change modes from our office. To my knowledge, SGM
is the only provider of this service,’ said Vigsø, who also stated that they did not
experience any forms of malfunctions during the 10-day project.