Every night on Joe Satriani's latest tour, the guitar genius continued to refine the art of lead guitar with new licks, tricks, effects and pure mojo. Similarly, lighting designer Alastair Watson chose High End Systems' new SHAPESHIFTER automated luminaire - along with a bevy of other HES gear - to help bring his visual voodoo to Joe's stage. Watson says, "We had 12 C1 SHAPESHIFTERs and six of the W1 SHAPESHIFTERs; we also used six Intellaspots. At FOH we had a Barco FLM HD20 and an Axon HD media server, control was a Hog 4 Fullboar with Playback wing. All HES control all the time!” 

The LD first became acquainted with the C1 and W1 via its initial promo clip, saying "I saw the video, you know the one. And then I flew to Austin because I wanted to have a look at it, face to face. I knew immediately that this was a light that was going to add an extra dimension to my show. I will be spec'ing these for some time to come. I would have a space on my plot to use these in any market.



Watson placed the C1s on a mid truss, covering both sides of each of the hard edges on that truss, and used the six W1s on an upstage truss, 'using those as specials for the most part'. He adds, "There are parts of the show with 160,000 lumens coming from just six units - it looks phenomenal. Throw in some macros on top of that, and you are in business."

The SHAPESHIFTERs macros and the Hog OS helped Alastair keep cool during the short pre-production timeline. He comments, "I had limited time to program - as seems to be par for the course these days. I used a lot of the macros to build my show; the looks you can achieve with a quick turn of the wheel make the programing fast and efficient, plus there are plenty of them so you can use a dozen and not be repeating looks."

Ask how SHAPESHIFTER fits in his designer tool bag, Watson says, "This is a beautiful light; it looks good off as well as on, it's a set piece. It's more like a practical than just a light. I used this light as a general stage wash, as a huge effect piece and also using just the indigo backlighters in the back as a darker start to a slow buildup into a song. They move very fast, so I can get them into a lot of places between looks very quickly. I like the reveal, slowly does it, plenty of features so you can bring something new out of the bag every few songs as the set progresses. I love the fact that each of the fixtures has the same profile, so you can get some really interesting macros out of the W1s. I would like to do a show with just W1s at some point.”

A dedicated Wholehog LD, Watson naturally chose the Hog 4 to program and control this tour. "The Hog 4 goes from strength to strength," he adds, "it's solid and reliable, programming seems to take less and less time with each release, and new tools in the software make rendering even the more complicated tasks a breeze - and more importantly - not overcomplicating the issue. I don't need 85 ways to do the same thing; a hand full of different options is fine. I am loving the speed of backup and the boot-up time on the console. I used to start the desk in the morning and wander off to do something else for a couple of minutes, now I don't have time to walk from the back of the console to the front before it has booted up. I really like being able to see that the desk is still GTG from the stage because of the blue grill lighting at the back. The new pixel mapping looks to be fantastic, I can't wait to try that out on my next tour."



Another HES innovation that Alastair has put through its paces is the Axon Server. "It's super small and has now done 60 shows. It has bounced around the world, done six weeks in Europe, three weeks in South America and three weeks in Australia/New Zealand. It's solid; I've never had a single problem. Coupled to the Barco projector I have been using for 150 shows - which has also never gone down - I have a completely reliable video setup. The content in the Axon is improved and still extremely easy to upload your own content. I shall be buying another one of these."

In addition to his LD duties, Watson was also the production manager on the Satriani tour. European lighting vendor was PRG (account manager Scottie Sanderson and lead tech Neil Smith), while DPS (account manager John Lee) is their US vendor.