Alford Media Aquires Ayrton Rivale and Puts Them to Work on The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Coppell, Texas-based Alford Media, an event services company with more than 220 corporate events worldwide to its credit annually, has invested in a large complement of Ayrton Rivale fixtures for use on their busy roster of projects. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
The purchase marked the first Ayrton fixtures in the Alford inventory. “We have always been interested in the Ayrton line; they make a creative product, and we have been looking for an opportunity to jump in,” says Lighting Manager Blake Taylor. “The Rivale nicely filled a gap in our profiles line and had some newer features that helped drive our decision,” such as variable CRI, infinite pan and tilt and an IP rating. “These were improvements and upgrades over the profiles we already had.”
“ACT has always been great about giving us access to new equipment,” Taylor reports. The company took delivery of its order in mid-summer, and the Rivale “were out the door within a week, even before their cases arrived,” with users including Alford’s Senior Lighting Designer Kurt Wunsch as well as guest designers working on Alford projects. “We’ve had great feedback from everyone who has used the Rivale,” Taylor notes.
One of the biggest projects for the Rivale so far has been The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2024, the world’s largest gathering of women and non-binary technologists, held at the Philadelphia Convention Center in October. In its second year working on the conference, Alford served as the AV specialist for the general sessions featuring keynote speakers, presenters and panels. The event drew about 12,000 attendees.
Kurt Wunsch says the lighting design “did not have a lot of flash-and movement but rather creative looks and changing color palettes that set the scene for an environment that was comfortable, happy and beautiful.”
His rig consisted of 747 fixtures. The Rivale were mounted on truss spanning the 500-foot stage where they lit drapes flanking the LED videowall backdrop with custom gobo patterns. “I didn’t use all the cool bells and whistles of the Rivale but needed their output to deliver the punch, color and crispness to fill out the rest of the space,” Wunsch explains. “They were the strongest choice for this task.”
The LED videowall’s graphics and a free-form, curved and self-illuminated step unit all featured topographical map-style visuals, which were reinforced by the custom gobos whose artwork was supplied by the client’s creative team.
“As a design tool, the Rivale were exactly what I needed,” reports Wunsch. “For this event, the fixtures’ zoom ratio was especially important since we were throwing from different distances.”
Wunsch had used Ayrton rental fixtures prior to the Rivale purchase, so he knew “the quality of the products” and was “very excited about adding them to our inventory.” He quickly went from “trying out the new arrivals to requesting them on half-a-dozen events already,” including one with a lot of dance numbers needing color and movement from the Rivale.
Taylor notes that Alford’s initial Rivale purchase “could turn into more down the road or we may add other fixtures as Ayrton grows the line. Feedback plays an important role as does if we constantly fall short of units being used on projects,” he says.
“ACT was thrilled to show and deliver these Rivale; Alford is extremely careful with their gear decisions and we knew Rivale would be the best possible fit for the broad array of work they do,” concludes Ryan Hindinger, ACT Entertainment’s Market Manager: Concert Touring & Live Experiences.