This year Germany’s biggest electronic music festival was inspired to attract
massive crowds, with more than 65,000 visitors attending Nature One.

For four days, top acts like Robin Schulz, Paul van Dyk, Sven Vath, Adam Beyer,
Laidback Luke and Sander van Doorn played at the open air Pydna missile base in
Kastellaun. In total over 350 DJs and live acts performed on 23 stages.

It was a feast for lighting designers, and in particular Thomas Gerdon. He designed
the lighting for the glowing pyramid in the large open-air area. This relied on
technical service provider, schoko pro from Wiesbaden, who supplied 150 GLP GT-1
heads, and around 100 more fixtures from GLP’s impression series. It was the sixth
time Gerdon had designed the lighting for Nature One.

“This year we started completely from scratch, with the dimensions and the basic
idea of the floor slightly adapted to accommodate the increasing number of
spectators,” said Gerdon. “We wanted a structure that did not restrict the view of
the stage — it was larger than in previous years to further enhance the long-range
effect. For this we needed a large number of reliable hybrid fixtures — and we
found what we were looking for with the GT-1. Meanwhile, the X4 provided its usual
high quality voluminous light.’

He continued, “We have worked frequently with GLP products for many years and
have always been satisfied — but we are pleased to have got such an innovative
new device as the GT-1. However, the bar set by the competition is also very high,
and so such a hybrid needed to deliver a clean and rich, narrow beam, like a wide-
open gobo.

“The GT-1 has fully met all our expectations. We especially enjoyed the animation
wheel and the various prisms, while the gobos are really nice and versatile. The
gobo animation effects are extremely fast,’ continued the lighting designer, “while
in Beam mode the fixture is tidy and has for its class a fairly small hotspot. Even
with high zoom rates we really liked the GT-1 — the focus fidelity was really neat,
requiring little adjustment … in fact we had great fun with the GT-1.

Gerdon adds that the enthusiasm for the biggest electronic festival in Germany
continues unabated even after more than 20 years — with Nature One selling out in
the last two years.

Besides the four principal floors operated by the organisers, various labels and club
operators — from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium took
over the other 19 club floors. These were situated in the bunkers of the former
missile base. This presented either a club feeling between the 1-meter-thick
concrete walls for a few hundred visitors, or a magnificent view over the festival
grounds from the 10-meter-high bunkers.

Trance, drum and bass, techno, house and hardcore … the floors covered the entire
spectrum of electronic music.