1991
The forest
At a techno party in the south of France, Bernd Koch dresses his own clothing stall with slide projectors bought at flea markets and effects painted by hand. Someone notices. He is asked to another party. Then another.
Analogue liquid light · since 1991
Your venue, repainted in light.
Coloured oil, glass and heat. Fifteen analogue projectors are enough to transform a façade, a cloister or a whole forest — and by morning, everything is exactly as it was.
- 1991 since
- 15 Solar 250 projectors
- 5 countries
- 100% analogue
Where we have been
Thirty-five years of rooms, festivals and small hours.
Hundreds of events across Portugal, France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain.
- Boom Festival Idanha-a-Nova
- Festival F Faro
- Disco Nectar Albufeira
- Château Perché France
- Levitation France
- La Cigale Paris
- Rex Club Paris
- La Fourmi Paris
- Le Zénith Montpellier
- Le Dièze Montpellier
- Handpan Festival Mèze
- Astropolis Brest
We have lit, among many others
- Laurent Garnier
- Richie Hawtin
- Nina Kraviz
- Sven Väth
- Ricardo Villalobos
- Derrick May
- Green Velvet
- Robert Hood
- Kerri Chandler
- Agoria
- Joey Beltram
- Kenny Larkin
- Stacey Pullen
- Luciano
- Apollonia
- The Hacker
- Jack de Marseille
- Elisa do Brasil
- Cut Killer
- Derrick Carter
- Joris Delacroix
- Francesco Farfa
- Colin Dale
- Trevor Jackson
- DJ Rush
- Laurent Garnier
- Richie Hawtin
- Nina Kraviz
- Sven Väth
- Ricardo Villalobos
- Derrick May
- Green Velvet
- Robert Hood
- Kerri Chandler
- Agoria
- Joey Beltram
- Kenny Larkin
- Stacey Pullen
- Luciano
- Apollonia
- The Hacker
- Jack de Marseille
- Elisa do Brasil
- Cut Killer
- Derrick Carter
- Joris Delacroix
- Francesco Farfa
- Colin Dale
- Trevor Jackson
- DJ Rush
And Big Brother and the Holding Company — Janis Joplin’s band.
What we project
None of this is recorded.
No file, no programming, no mapping. Oil that moves with the heat of the lamp, and glass that turns. More than a hundred and fifty effects wait in the trunks, and no two ever come out in the same order. What you see is happening as you watch it.
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Coloured oils held between two sheets of glass. The heat of the lamp stirs them, and they never draw the same thing twice. It is the oldest effect in the trade and still the hardest to fake.
Optikinetics · liquid wheel
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Two screens laid over each other, turning at different speeds. The image is in neither of them — it comes out of the gap between the two.
Moiré · 2 tramas
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A prism turning in front of the lens. One image becomes twelve, then a hundred, and opens out overhead until it covers the ceiling.
Prisma rotativo
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Polarising crystals that break white light apart. The colours shift with the music without anyone touching them.
Solar Crystal Pulse
The venue
We light the room, not the stage.
We moved beyond the stage early on, to use the whole place — the audience included — as a projection screen.
Bernd Koch
Stage lighting lights whoever is playing. We dress the building, the ceiling, the trees and the ground people dance on. Where there is no surface, we bring five-and-a-half-metre translucent screens.
Hallucinogenic, never aggressive. It sits well alongside conventional stage lighting.
Who we light
If you recognise your own venue here, we already know the essentials.
Every space asks for a different rig. Tell us which one is yours: the quote comes back with the distances measured and the number of projectors already worked out.
- 01 Festivals and promoters Several projection points spread across the site — stages, chill-outs and walkways. Self-contained rigging, and a habit of adapting to unlikely ground.
- 02 Venues and clubs Installed for a season or for a single night. Two projectors answer directly to the sound, for small floors where the haze dances in the beams.
- 03 Weddings and private parties Estates, cloisters, gardens and family houses. Warm, enveloping light, with no strobes and no aggression.
- 04 Councils and heritage sites Façades, ramparts, churches and cliffs. Projection with no contact, no fixings and nothing touching the building.
- 05 Companies and agencies Launches, dinners and openings. An ordinary room transformed for one night, and handed back untouched the next morning.
Since 1991
It started by accident, in a forest.
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- 24 years
The pizzeria
By day, two pizzerias — ten years in the Aveyron, fourteen in the Hérault. By night, the projectors. The double life lasted until the light paid for itself.
- 2020
Lagos
He buys a restaurant in the Algarve in March. The pandemic closes it before it opens. He stays anyway — for the region, the light and the sky.
- Today
Fifteen projectors
The same 1970s optics, maintained and repaired by hand. While the rest of the world moved to video, the kit stayed analogue. That is why nothing ever repeats.
Bernd Koch, founder · Lagos, Algarve
The kit
The Solar 250 is the grandfather of every light show.
From Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and Gong to tonight’s techno parties. A DMX system drives sixty-four gobo combinations at variable speed; two projectors answer directly to the sound.
- 15 Optikinetics Solar 250
- 150+ different effects
- 64 gobo combinations · DMX
- 01 Optikinetics Solar LED · weatherproof
- 01 kaleidoscope projector
- 02 trunks of effects
- 04 round screens · Ø 5.5 m
- 8×4 cinema screen · metres
- 07 tripods
- 150 metres of P17 cable
How it works
Four steps, no surprises.
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01
The place
Tell us where and when. Two photographs of the space and the date are enough for us to come back with a price.
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02
The recce
We look at the surfaces, measure the distances and choose the effects the place asks for. Remotely or on site.
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03
The rig
We arrive several hours ahead. We bring tripods, cable and screens if there is nothing to project onto. Nothing is fixed to your walls.
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04
The night
The projection is played live, start to finish. Nothing runs by itself, because nothing is recorded.
Lighting thought through for a particular place takes time. So does a good sound system. Sound is not our trade, but we know the right people — just ask.
Get a quote
Tell us what you have to light.
We answer within twenty-four hours. If you would rather talk before you write, the phone is always on.