For the first time, the AES Student Section Graz went offbook to explore a different kind of expertise: Lighting Design. As it happens, our vice chair Peter works as a freelancer Lighting Designer and Operator besides his study. He setup some nice toys in the youth center Explosiv Graz which has it's own concert venue and invited us over for a little workshop.
Peter showed several different types of lighting fixtures, their usage and quality. He also talked about controlling them via DMX, which is the standard lighting control protocol. Here he used the knowlege of our study and the compulsory bachelor lectures "Digital Audio Engineering" and "Communication Engineering" to go into the details of lighting data transmission. The third part was aimed at hooking up the fixtures to the powerline properly and safe.
During the whole workshop all participants were encouraged to use the lighting fixtures and were given little problems to solve while hooking up the controls or hanging them into a truss. At the end Peter gave a brief introduction into how lighting shows are setup on a lighting console and talked a little bit about lighting design itself.
The resonance was very positive, so there might be a second edition in the near future.
