Case Study

THE RIO HOTEL & CASINO, LAS VEGAS

Creative Integration Studio worked with lighting wizards Andrew Giffin and Chris Kuroda to reimagine one of Vegas’ most iconic buildings.

As part of a multi-million-dollar renovation of the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Dreamscape Companies commissioned an ambitious redesign of the famed neon lighting that’s covered the exterior of the hotel’s two towers since the 1990s.

Inspired by the lighting and visuals he saw while attending a Phish concert, Dreamscape VP Marty Millman set out to replace the original design’s red and blue with a new canvas powered by ClearLED’s X-Bar system, featuring over 351,000 individually modifiable pixels. Millman enlisted Phish Lighting Designers Andrew Giffin and Chris Kuroda, who brought on Creative Integration Studio’s Ruben Laine to handle Notch design and system integration.

In looking for the right solution, the creative team decided to treat video as lighting, outputting it in a way that was both randomisable and laidback while allowing micro-manageable levels of detail for each vertical strip, some of which contained over 4,000 pixels. Laine began in Notch, treating each line as its own layer complete with controls over intensity, form, colour, position, scale, and transparency that contributed to the solid colours, gradients, and intricate patterns of the final display.

The team played back sequences from the console and recorded them into Notch via ArtNet. From there, they rendered sequences at 60 frames per second to get the smoothest feeling for each pixel.

The genius of using Notch this way during the creative process is that it allowed me to use a familiar tool and our usual workflow. We were able to discuss ideas as if they were lighting cues, and we could create and manipulate them on the fly with a lighting console.

Andrew Giffin, Lighting Programmer

Additional press coverage:

KSNV, JamBase.