I’ve been using Beam for music performance for a while now, but have been getting into theatre lighting lately and am currently using Live, Beam, and Resolume for a room-scale immersive theatre installation. I suspect I’m way out on the skinny branches here; lighting and show designers wouldn’t typically use Live or Beam for this, but I’m finding the combination very powerful. I’ve looked superficially at QLab but so far it hasn’t convinced me to switch.
I’m using Beam with a set of Aputure infinibars, some MC Pro lights, and an array of Hue bulbs driven by a customized version of dmx-hue. Not at all typical theatre lighting fixtures, but they’re allowing me to embed lighting within a room to control both traditional fixtures (overhead spots, desk lamps, etc) and hidden accent lighting where I need it. The lighting setup is entirely wireless; zigbee for Hue and CRMX for all other fixtures.
One of the fun aspects of working with this tech stack is the ability to modulate audio, video and projection in a coordinated cue. For example, combining an audio filter sweep, lighting fade or color shift, and projection effect, all mapped to a single macro. That’s not particularly advanced for live music shows, but in the theatre world it feels like these systems are usually quite silo’ed.
Anyhow, would love to hear if others are using Beam for art installations or theatre, immersive or otherwise.