Digital Spherical Displays
Pufferfish supply Magic Balls for Coldplay from Pufferfish on Vimeo.
Pufferfish are thrilled to have provided the much admired 'Magic Balls' for Coldplay's Viva la Vida World Tour. Coldplay tasked lighting designer Paul Normandale with realising their vision of having projection spheres suspended above their audience as part of their "ongoing mission to make a big room feel as small as possible". Pufferfish were only too pleased to help out, bringing their considered experience in all things spherical to bear on the custom-designed touring units. Pufferfish would like to thank Coldplay, Paul, XL-Video, the tour team and our friends at Green Hippo for making this such an enjoyable and successful project, and helping us realise a long held PufferDream - a magnificent multi-orbed ex-spherience on a truly global stage!
Pufferfish designed and delivered six PufferSpheres for the tour. Each unit was custom built to cope with the demands of a global tour, harnessing the trademark PufferVirtues of rugged strength, reliability and portability and super-charging them to the tour-team's specifications. The result: lightweight extra-strength units with stealth inflation systems and pressure-sensitive sealed spheres, each unit travelling in two custom flight cases, one for the chassis and another for the inflatable sphere. The units rig straight from their flight cases, with a remarkably quick set-up/set-down time and no need for tricky projector tracking, edge-blending or warping envelopes, leaving the riggers free to get a good night's sleep, or at least be first to the pub!
Pufferfish provided five 2m diameter PufferSphere XL units, each equipped with a Pufferfish SuperUmami lens and powered by single Barco CLM R10 projector. The PufferSphere XLs are suspended from 10 half tonne fixed speed hoists, controlled via a 10-way Kinesys fixed speed automation system with Vector control. This allows them to move up and down during the show, appearing and disappearing from 'sock'-style soft elements.
Pufferfish also provided our most powerful PufferSphere yet, and the biggest single-source internally projected sphere in the world, the PufferSphere XXL. Codenamed 'Big Bertha', and powered by a 20,000 ANSI lumen Christie Roadster projector, the XXL is rigged FOH and is used as 360 degree alternative to the same-old same-old flat screens.
The content is operated by PufferSphere and Green Hippo Aficionado, Ben Miles, who uses four Green Hippo HD Hippotizer V3s, each with Green Hippo's free Pufferizer Plug-In, to create perfectly warped and aligned 360 degree projections. The Hippotizers are stationed backstage and controlled via Green Hippo's ZooKeeper remote software from Miles' GrandMa Lite desk, ensuring control, operation and delivery of real time spherical content to the PufferSpheres. A massive thanks from Pufferfish to the ubiquitous Green Hippo, some Grade A animal magic!
The PufferSphere XL is now commercially available for both purchase and hire. Feel a sudden, burning desire to own your own? Download the brochure to find out more, email or pick up the phone to see how we can make your wildest spherical fantasies come true.
See more fan pics here and here and here
Find out more about who we worked with:
Coldplay's Chris Martin talks up his magic balls.
Green Hippo
XL Video
Light Alternative