Rob Thomas
2005
Products: Versa TILE

Rob Thomas' first solo tour supporting his new album, Something To Be, began earlier this year with a small U.S. promotional tour before heading off to Europe, with Element Labs' Versa(TM) TILEs providing visual accompaniment along the way. The former Matchbox Twenty signer is now touring the U.S. featuring even more Versa TILEs.

Visual designer Ben Richards is always on the lookout for originality in LED technology. "When I came across the Versa TILEs, I thought the low-res pixelation was so cool because it just gives you something else to look at-compared to traditional LED screens where the goal in the past few years has been to get more and more resolution and smaller pixel size and clarity. "So I wanted to see if we could use video content in a different way, and everywhere we went people were asking me where I made the content," he continues. "I was always laughing about that because I was mainly using stock content from the Catalyst, which came out three years ago. Because I'm using the content in such a low pixellated way and I can texture it a certain way, people don't think for a second that it's not custom content. To me, that was a testament to how cool these Versa TILEs are because they actually help you recycle old art into new art."

For this particular show, Richards also wants to trick the audiences' eyes into believing that there were more TILEs onstage than there actually are. "For the club tour, I had three panels per 10' foot, 3' wide column," Richards explains. "Then I put an empty space between these columns as if there were another one. So by the time it was spread out, it was almost 30 feet of width with only five columns." Richards then used smaller Versa TILE panels to dress the front of the risers, which completes the picture and makes your eye believe that there is a full video screen there covering the entire stage area. "That worked very well for us in clubs," he says. "Now, what we're about to do in the States is increase the columns' heights with another panel. Then, on the floor, instead of just being the quarter-meter panels straight across the front, we are playing with different heights. So that the musical director, the drummer and the backup singers are at 3' high with the big panels in front of them and then the guitar player and the bass player are lower with the quarter-meter panel in front of them."

All together the fall tour has 29 one-meter and 12 quarter-meter Versa TILE square-model panels. "There will be two active servers," he explains. "The five columns and panels dressing the backline are receiving content from the first server. Because the Versa DRIVE D2 is so easy to program, I can have the two zones coming out of one output of the Catalyst (using all eight layers). That leaves the second server to take care of the soft LED curtain." A Wholehog III console will control everything, and Richards will have a three-person crew for the entire visual department.

"It's going to be pretty cool to streamline this way. The best part of the Versa TILEs is that they're so easy to set up and tear down," he says. "the crew treats them like extra moving lights. They just need power and signal and they're done. It's very simple and they tour really well." All of this sets the stage for the final leg of the North American tour, which will start in the spring of next year. "At that point I'm hoping to come back with some even crazier ideas using the Versa TILEs. And motion control will be a part of it-so I'll have Versa TILEs flying all over the place! I was really happy to find this product and to work with old friends like Nils [Thorjussen] and Claas [Ernst] was just an added bonus," Richards concludes. "We've really been able to make a splash with it."