ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1998, a handful of people got a peek into the future of the entertainment lighting industry. In a private showing across the street from the Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) trade show in Phoenix, Arizona, a group of employees from Lighting & Sound Design (LSD) unveiled a prototype of the Icon M. In that rarefi ed air, a select group of lighting designers witnessed the promise of the fi rst digital luminaire with “soft” gobos that were designed and projected digitally using a graphics engine driven by Texas Instruments’ Digital Mirror Device (DMD). Not since the Genesis tour with original Vari*Lite automated luminaires in 1981 had such a monumental paradigm shift taken place in the industry. But not in the way the participants expected.
