The Zurich Openair Festival, which has existed since 2010, attracted more than
60,000 visitors this year to the festival grounds on the outskirts of Zurich.

The musical spectrum included indie, electro and rock music, and included a
mixture of internationally known musicians, bands and newcomers. This year,
Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Sigur Ros and Editors were among the most
prominent.

Leo Herrmann was responsible for the lighting design of the “Dance Circus stage
with his design company Lumenlabor. The lighting designer had 20 X4 Bars in use.

In the Dance Circus, a six-masted tent, the festival presented famous acts from the
EDM scene. This year included Boyznoise, Booka Shade, Digitalism and Lexy & K-
Paul.

“I did not change the basis of the design theme from 2015,’ stated Leo Herrmann.
“And yet I wanted to go a step further and take the whole thing to the outside. The
design, itself, is based on a “light tunnel’, which works from a front to rear
perspective on the LED wall at the back of the stage. Here I was looking for a
device which offered me the possibility to drive all the LEDs individually, in order to
incorporate the set border into the existing pixel mapping. I found it within GLP’s X4
series. I had first seen the X4 Bar at a Milky Chance show and I knew right away
that it was what I was looking for. So I specified 20 fixtures,’ continued the lighting
designer.

“12 of the X4 Bar 20’s were vertically integrated into the suspended ladder brackets
to the left and right of the stage. These formed the lateral end. The advantage here
was that I had the tilt function to pull the entire picture across the width, making
the stage look enormous in size. The remaining eight X4 Bars were placed on the
front edge of the stage, forming the lower end, or more precisely the bottom of the
tunnel. So I had the possibility to fold the beam off the floor and side walls of the
tunnel! In this way I had the possibility to put a light curtain onto the stage, which
together with the individual pixels made a wonderful effect. Thanks to the zoom and
tilt functions, there were quite new possibilities for programming. Together with
pixel mapping this became the ultimate tool for EDM! ”

In conclusion, Leo Herrmann confirmed, “The X4 Bars will certainly have a
permanent place in the design of the next edition of the Zurich Open Air!”

Feedback Show Systems & Service GmbH from Stolberg served as the technical
service provider.