Red Hot Chili Peppers - I’m With You Tour

Disguise goes on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers after successfully integrating the GrandMA lighting console as a live show controller

For the stage design of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers tour, design studio UVA have taken the band’s iconic octagonal logo and exploded it upwards and outwards, creating a bold and futuristic octagonal chandelier above the stage. This exploded logo is a versatile sculptural form, which is part lighting surface and part high definition video screen. Directly below it is an LED floor in the same octagonal shape which lights the band and changes with their movements.

The design blends multiple layers of technologies; traditional lighting fixtures, high-power LED fixtures, low and high-resolution LED screens suitable for Image Magnification (IMAG) for live shots of the band, as well as for graphical and other video content. Having designed the show with their in-house integrated production toolkit to visualise the moving scenography and sequence content to the music, they then handed all the appropriate show control over to Scott Holthaus (LD) and Leif Dixon (show operator).

The different stage elements have been built by TAIT Towers. The panels forming the central chandelier can expand, rotate and slide, making the design dynamic and versatile yet modular and easy to tour with. Evolving and changing shape throughout the set, the stage will effectively underline the various musical influences and styles the RHCP are known and loved for.

Functioning as a pre-visualiser, sequencer as well as an output tool, Disguise has for the first time been successfully integrated with a GrandMA lighting console to get maximum versatility in live show control. One MA console is used for the lighting, and the other to control video and live cameras. The central hub of the system remains Disguise, allowing for Art-Net control of BlackMagic SDI video routers, receiving position information from moving scenography from the TAIT Navigator system, and running video, camera effects plus some sound to light effects linked to the bass and snare drums â all from within the Disguise toolkit.

The stage includes TAIT Towersâ first production version of their 30mm LED stage decking, 8 custom venetian blinds featuring one side of SACO v9 from Nocturne/PRG and the other banks of 18×18 ACL blinders, a 60 × 40 SACO v28 also from Nocturne/PRG, with HD cameras also from Nocturne/PRG whilst FOH video control and witching, including several Disguise systems which were provided by VER.