BARCELONA, Spain — Barco’s wrap-around LED screen for U2’s 360° tour is the world’s first transformable screen, able to change shape in all directions during the concert, and it’s also the biggest LED screen used so far in concert touring, with more than 500,000 pixels of video in a screen measuring 24 meters by 16 meters.
Long-time U2 designers Willie Williams and Mark Fisher created the stage and show. Chuck Hoberman and Barco helped turn their vision of a 360° moving video screen into a reality, providing more than half a million transformable LED pixels (FLX), which are integrated into a transformable structure designed by Barco’s Innovative Designs, based on a Hoberman invention.
“Video is the most powerful tool you can have on stage,” said Williams. “But now that video is so ubiquitous in rock stage setting, we needed a very extreme change of canvas to be heard. The transformable LED gave us the chance to create a transparent 360° moving video element, unprecedented in this industry. It is the icing on the cake on this design.”
“It is thrilling to see the work I have been doing with transformable structures expressed in such a whole new way,” said Hoberman. “The screen is like a living thing, it continuously changes shapes and forms and the video acts like live skin on it.”
“We wanted to create something that was bigger than a conventional stage. This tour was big enough to make a purpose built structure,” says Mark Fisher, U2 stage designer. “I wanted to create a transparent stage and really needed a video screen that would fit in that environment, a round screen that would not block the view for the audience. Barco’s FLX gave us the chance to create this. We were happy to be working with Barco again; they have helped very well in the past and delivered an extraordinary product for this show.”
“This is the third time we are supporting U2 in the new millennium and in response to the market's demand for unlimited creativity, we have created the FLX single pixel platform,” said Carl Rijsbrack, Vice President product management. “The FLX LED pixel modules can be mounted onto any possible structure, creating any shape designers want to.”
“There have been many evolutions in the LED video market for concert touring, from a fixed I-Mag screen to moving screens to transformable screens now,” said Frederic Opsomer, vice president of Barco's Innovative Designs. This is the fifth time I have been working with U2 and it is again a big honor to be part of it. The entertainment business is constantly asking for new and innovating products, even in these difficult times and the U2 360° tour is a perfect example of this.”
In addition to the giant LED screen, Barco integrated a total of 1,200 FLX-60 pixel modules surrounding the edges of both the A and B stages and the bridges. The stage LEDs provide an extra dimension to the graphic show projected on the screen. Almost 1,000 customized lights, specifically designed for this tour and manufactured by Barco, light up the stage canvas.
For more information, please visit www.barco.com.
