Martin Professional's new compact 150W luminare the smartMAC recently proved it could punch well above its weight at one of the UK's prestigious dance festivals, Gatecrasher, in the Dirty Disco and Turbo tent.

Supporting lighting rental supplier Colour Sound Experiment and LD Simon Barrington was 12 x smartMAC's, 4 x LC 2140 LED Panels run by Maxedia Pro media server, 4 x MAC 575 Krypton's, and the new Roadie Compact high powered smoke, haze and CO2 effect machine.

Lighting Operator for the tent Chris Sirey comments "the smartMAC's are a nice little unit...very bright and aesthetically looks good. I also found the LC Panels were most impressive with good colour saturation and brightness, ideal pixel pitch, and nice effects for corporate work as well as rock n roll."

Controlling the LC panels with a simple DVI input over fibre optic cable was Martin Pro's Maxedia Pro system and Chris continues "this was very intuitive and easy to pick up with good standard content."

Simon Barrington designed the panels as individual hangs on the back truss with equidistant spacing and addressed with gaps in-between the panels using the simple dip-switches to achieve wide aspect ratio over the four panels.

"The transparency of the LC panels looks very appealing and rigging lights behind to shine through is an affect I hope to be able to use in the future."

Four smartMACS were rigged on the front truss as well as the MAC 575 Krypton's, and the remainder on the floor punching up on to the tent roof (approx 20 m) projecting their exceptionally sharp glass gobos.

Despite the atrocious weather conditions the Martin kit lasted all weekend without any hitches, a testament to their proven reliability and rugged build quality. Haydn Cruickshank, owner of Colour Sound experiment had nothing but praise for the Martin kit, "Martin kit continually proves that it's got what it takes no matter what the application, it ticked all the boxes for what we wanted to do. Gatecrasher once again proved a huge success for all concerned and we look forward to this partnership continuing on future events."