Wireless Solution Sweden AB was recently in Berlin to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The four-day festival ran from November 5-9, 2009, with the highlight being the “Festival of Freedom” held at the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Thousands of guests attended the evening of November 9 to celebrate the fall of the wall 20 years ago – including representatives of the former GDR opposition, eyewitnesses, official guests and personalities from politics and culture.
The Berlin Staatskapelle and State Opera Chorus, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, opened the ceremony on the Pariser Platz. Potsdamer Platz, 18th of March Square and the Reichstag all held major events as well. Lighting Designer was Gerd Helinski, Managing Director of Helicon-Media GmbH. After the concert, the fall of the Berlin Wall was symbolized with the toppling of a domino wall made up of over 1000 giant Styrofoam dominoes, stacked along the entire wall path. Following the symbolic “fall”, hundreds of thousands of people filled the street festivals in one giant party, complete with a fireworks display.
Helicon-Media specified a system including 90 DeSisti Outdoor 5kW Fresnels, various blinders by MAJOR, 12 Falcon 7kW and 30 HES Showguns, controlled by 2 grandMA Full Size consoles and 2 MA NSPs. To reliably deliver signal to the fixtures, 10 Wireless Solution W-DMX™ BlackBox S-1 transmitters and 15 W-DMX™ Outdoor BlackBox R-512 receivers solved the problem.
“We have been using W-DMX equipment successfully since the World Cup in soccer in 2006,” said Helinski, “The W-DMX system has worked at numerous events beyond the specified limits of the system. For instance, we have used the system over a distance of 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) reliably and without interference at the opening ceremony for the new Strelasund bridge.”
He continues, “For the Festival of Freedom this year, a total of 21 light towers had to be networked. We expected it to be quite a challenge to set up a data system in an urban environment where masts of the big TV and radio stations added to the usual city data chaos. The Wireless Solution W-DMX however worked without a glitch.”
Udo Thimm was operating the show. Stefan Krawietz and Tobias Müller of Helicon-Media were project managers, and Gerald Poneski of Compact Team was producer. The show was organized by Art Projects of Berlin. Lighting was supplied by Helicon Media GmbH, who recently invested heavily in Wireless Solution equipment.
The celebration was covered internationally, including special dedicated pages and fan sites in social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Naturally, one of the most popular questions was, “Where were you when the wall came down?” As it turns out, the 20-year anniversary proved to be just as memorable.
Mauerfall Photos: Copyright – Gerd Helinski
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