ABSTRACT
The year 1999 was a watershed in automated lighting. At LDI in November of that year, Light & Sound Design (now part of Production Resource Group; PRG) displayed the fi rst digital light called the Icon M. It was a moving yoke fi xture that projected “soft gobos”—gobos that could be created with software rather than hardware-and animation created by the use of a Texas Instruments (TI) Digital Micromirror Device™ (DMD) under the control of a microprocessor. It was the fi rst time the idea of marrying automated lighting and video was presented to the industry. Once the Icon M was demonstrated, it was clear where the live event production industry was going in the next few years.
