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Transmission festival:
lasers, music
and great stories
Interview with Bas Kemper, lighting designer
T
of the night with lights, video-shows, movie
clips and the support of various types of
performers. This artistic solution combines
perfectly with the music, giving life to an
experience that is captivating and fascinating.
The production of Transmission is developed
by a number of technical teams, with a
common passion for music and many years
of working-experience together.
Bas Kemper is the lighting designer and besides
following the lighting design project he also
designs the stage. We interviewed him in order
to learn more about his work and the creative
process that leads to the birth of a new
edition of the festival.
Pleased to meet you Bas. Let us start with
your background, since when have you been
in the Transmission team?
It all started about ten-eleven years ago. A
friend of mine, who was already working in the
organization of the Festival involved me in this
project. He asked me to work next to him, as an
operator at the lighting control console, so I
began my experience in the team. Subsequently,
two operators were added and I started to
dedicate more time to designing the stage. Over
the years the group has been organized into
various work-teams which cooperate in the
design of all the artistic components.
Every edition of the festival is characterized by
a new theme that defines and orients the style
of the event and the stage design.
At Transmission, last November, I was amazed
by your ability to create a story and to tell it
using lights and images during the evening.
How is the design of your festival born?
The theme of each edition is curated by the
Dutch award-winning VJ team at Vision
Impossible, the company in charge of creating
the storyline and producing the motion-
graphics. They write a short film script and then
each DJ intro (up to 4 minutes long) is telling
a part of the theme and story. If you would put
all of them together you have one big story.
The theme is also expressed in the trailer,
aftermovie, artwork and costumes of the
dancers. Based on the draft from Vision
Impossible, my work-group starts to design
the stage and to plan what it will look like.
We always start from a recurrent characteristic,
that is, the use of a large central screen. It may
he international panorama of electronic
music festivals includes concepts that are
very different from one another. Some events
focus entirely on the DJs and their popularity,
so that gigantic stages and cinema-like settings
become of secondary importance; others try
to find a balance between the music and the
show. However, all have a common
denominator: they offer the spectators a show
to remember. I am an electronic music
enthusiast, over the years I have participated
in numerous festivals all over Europe and I have
seen how many different artistic styles can be
followed when designing a stage or a lighting
system. When I went to the Transmission
Festival in Prague last November, however, I was
particularly impressed. The event takes place
at the O2 Arena, a modern arena that can hold
almost 20,000 spectators, and since the last ten
years it is one of the appointments with the
greatest attraction on a European scale. Besides
being famous for the high quality of the music
selected, it is also famous for the great use
of very powerful coloured lasers, a truly strong
point in the lighting design. In fact, once inside
the arena I saw a remarkable show from both
a technical and artistic point of view: each
edition of the festival is characterized by
a theme, which is a starting point for composing
a real story, which is told during the course
Transmission has become one of the most
important and appreciated festivals in the
European panorama, and a leading trance
festival over the world. What is the secret
of your success?
The founder of the festival and United Music,
Anco van der Kolk, moved to Prague from the
Netherlands, with the mission to organize high
quality dance events in Central Europe and
with a group of friends started to think about
this project. They are all great fans of the same
music genre, trance, and this factor certainly
contributed to the growth of a team which had
common work-aims. There was a leap in quality
when we decided to shift the location to the
O2 Arena: it had just been built and was an
avant-garde structure. It was a successful move,
it gave us the possibility to experiment new
technical and creative solutions.
SHOW TIME / LUCE 324
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