Following a 500 million dollar renovation, Atlantic City’s newest hotel and casino opened at the beginning of the summer in the building formerly occupied by the Trump Taj Mahal. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City is an entertainment-focused resort that incorporates two concert venues alongside a multitude of restaurants, an expansive casino floor and a 2000-room hotel. Anchoring the music-themed resort is a 60-foot tall replica of a guitar, which stands at the entrance to the building and forms the centerpiece of a lightshow that welcomes guests as they arrive. Time-coded to classic rock songs, the impressive pixel-mapped display runs at regular intervals every evening of the week, triggered by the powerful Timeline and Calendar features of ADJ’s Compu SDE DMX control software.
The giant guitar, modeled after the iconic Gibson Les Paul, towers over the resort’s rear courtyard and vehicle entrance, making it the first thing that many visitors see when they arrive. While impressive during the day, the area truly comes to life at night when LED pixel tape illuminates the outline of the guitar and its strings as well as the textured walls that surround it on three sides.
Taking place in just eight months, the transition of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino from the Trump Taj Mahal was a serious undertaking. It involved a complete overhaul of everything, both inside and outside the venue, which required work from countless contractors and technology specialists. Advanced audio-visual and interactive media company Technomedia was initially brought in to the project to work on installations inside the building, but were then given the additional task of programming the outdoor lightshow as Technomedia's Lighting Designer Edgar Gonzalez explains:
“We were brought in to this part of the project last minute; it wasn’t part of the original scope of our involvement which was based inside the building. But the project managers had found out about my programming background and mentioned in a meeting that they’d like to create time-coded shows for the outside entrance area. Another company had installed the pixel tape, and a MADRIX control system, but it had only been setup to run through random effects. I was given the challenge of designing and programming engaging lightshows, synchronized to music, that could be played at regular intervals each night.”
Now a valued member of the Technomedia team, Edgar previously worked for ADJ and he remains an avid ambassador for the company’s products. As part of his role, he was responsible for programming many of ADJ’s trade show booth lightshows and is therefore experienced in using Compu Show’s Timeline feature to create shows that are timed-coded to music. This powerful tool allows Cues to be easily arranged along a visual timeline, alongside an audio track, to quickly create a synchronized show that will run perfectly in time with the music every time it is played.
“The LED installation had already been set up by EGI Event Production Services with MADRIX control, which is pixel-mapping software ideal for such a large system; there are 75 universes involved! But I needed something that would allow me to trigger the MADRIX effects from a timecode and I knew that Compu SDE was the perfect solution. I acted as the Lighting Director, coming up with the ideas, but brought in a MADRIX expert – Dylan Toogood – to program the effects and patterns that I needed and make them available for me to trigger from within the Compu Show software.”
This arrangement proved extremely successful and together Edgar and Dylan designed and programmed five separate time-coded lightshows set to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’; Starship’s ‘We Built This City’; Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s ‘Welcome Back My Friends’; The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘On My Way’, a custom track created for Hard Rock for use in their commercials. Each of the shows make full use of the vast expansive of LED pixels, combining multiple effects triggered to match the tempo and various sections that make up each of the songs.
Having created the programs, Edgar then used another powerful tool that is incorporated within Compu Show to sequence and schedule regular playback of the songs. The Calendar function of the software allows time-coded sequences to be set to run at specific times of the day and days of the week. This allowed Edgar to schedule regular playback of the five songs throughout each evening, interspersed with dynamic ‘filler’ effects that run between the designated lightshows.
“For a project like this, the Calendar feature is really cool to allow you to set it and forget it,” enthused Edgar. “I did all the programming work, but now these five shows run automatically during each evening without anyone having to be responsible for activating them. I’d previously had lots of experience using Compu Show, so knew what to expect in terms of programming, but I was really impressed with how well it integrated with MADRIX to allow for intuitive Timeline-programming and Calendar-scheduling of the pixel-mapped effects.”
Now that the resort is open to the public, the regular lightshows are wowing visitors every night of the week as they arrive at the Hardrock Hotel & Casino and setting the tone for the venue’s classic rock theme. The combination of the huge guitar statue, vast canvas of LED tape, Edgar’s creative vision and Dylan’s programming skills make for a truly awe-inspiring display that we’re proud to be able to say is all triggered from ADJ’s Compu SDE!
Venue
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City
1000 Boardwalk
Atlantic City, NJ 08401
www.hardrockhotelatlanticcity.com
ADJ Dealer
Technomedia Solutions • www.gotechnomedia.com
LED & MADRIX Installation
EGI Event Production Services • http://www.earlgirlsinc.com
Compu Show Timeline Programmer and Lighting Director for MADRIX
Edgar Gonzalez
MADRIX Cue Programmer
Dylan Toogood
Photography
Brian Dowdle (Compu SDE product photo: Edgar Gonzalez)
Videography
Jose Heredia & Candice Cardenas
Gear List
ADJ Compu SDE
Check out video of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino lightshow here:
