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Wired Science Television Set

Hollywood, California, USA

PBS' newest weekly series, Wired Science, is a fast-paced television show that covers modern scientific and technological topics, spotlighting the newest innovations and research. Based at the KCET studio in Hollywood, CA, its own television set features cutting-edge LED lighting from Philips.

The show’s Production Designer John Ivo Gilles was charged to conceptualize a lighting scheme for the show’s main stage that would maintain the existing graphic direction of Wired magazine. Giles and his team of KCET’s engineers created six columns with vertical bands of colored light to mimic the spine of the magazine, which is a different color every month. Each column is illuminated by two ColorBlast® 12 LED light fixtures that are placed inside at opposing ends to produce uniform, colored lighting.

The ColorBlast 12 fixtures were chosen for their flexibility and small form factor. The one-square-foot (30.5 cm) columns restricted the use of conventional light sources because they could get very hot in such a confined space. “We could not have been successful without LED light fixtures,” said John Gilles. “We were very concerned about light sources making the metal columns hot to the touch, and we wanted to create a slowly-changing, colorful effect. Philips’ LED systems provided the easy solution to meet all of our needs.” In addition, no special rigging was required due to the easy-to-install base mounts on the fixtures. Other Philips LED fixtures can be found throughout the set including iColor Cove® QL, a low-profile linear light that illuminates the risers of the steps on the set. Both the iColor Cove QL and ColorBlast 12 fixtures integrated easily with the show’s existing control solution, allowing Gilles to benefit from the latest advances in LED lighting technology, while using the control solution that was already in place.

Gilles and the Wired Science crew are “tickled pink” with the effects that are created by the Philips LED-based light fixtures, and more fittingly, perhaps pink will debut as the next episode’s column color.