The ILDA Awards are the laser display industry's equivalent of Hollywood's Oscars. Each year, they honor companies and individuals from around the world for their achievements. These awards were bestowed during the 2024 ILDA Conference in Wrocław, Poland, hosted by Visual Sensation Laser shows & technologies.
• The Artistic Awards cover virtually all aspects of modern laser displays, from the creation of individual laser graphics to the production of huge outdoor shows.
• The Technical Awards, named for pioneering laserist Fred Fenning, honor technological achievements that advance the industry.
• Special Achievement Awards are given for significant achievements that are not already sufficiently covered by existing ILDA Award categories. Two were awarded in 2024.
• The Career Achievement Award is ILDA's highest honor, given for work spanning many years in the area of show quality, innovation, and industry service.
For more details on the winners, download the 2024 ILDA Awards booklet (PDF format). The booklet lists all winners, plus credits and a description of the work.
Judging Coordinator
Richard Gonsalves
Judges
Danny Cheng, Thierry Darrine, George Dodworth, Michael Dunn, Derek Garbos, Terrence Green, Tim Hallmark, Christine Jenkin, David Kumpula, Theo Petrides, Karl Rothweiler, Merlin Schaadt, Nick Squire, Markus Voggenberger, Steve Wade
A large spectacle consisting of several elements, celebrating 25 years of the company. The combination of laser mapping on a 67m diameter dome, and atmospheric lasers with additional special effects created an amazing spectacle to open the event.
Credits: Laser designers: Jakub Marcinek, Maciej Łukaszewski
Music: RedOctopus, “The Epic Orchestral Dubstep”; MS-Records,”Sport Epic Metal”
At this opening ceremony, we used 15 lasers for laser graphics on the playing surface of the stadium. The main idea and task was to portray the friendship between Qatar and the UAE, and an effort to point out the similarities and differences in their culture (fishing, pearl collection, falconry, hospitality, cities...). Same but different.
All lasers were the supporting element of the whole event. In cooperation with Qvision productions at Al Thumama stadium in Qatar.
Credits: Designer, Programmer and Laser operator: Martin Gabco
Music: Greg Hulme, "Oscars Theme"
The show was created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the automobile factory. It tells the story of the company, from its inception to the final product. Our team carefully went through every step of the production process, starting with writing the script and finishing with creating the video. We used video materials provided by the client, such as panoramic views of the factory and footage of people working there.
Credits: Producer: Alexey Lushin; Project manager: Oleg Boyarkin; Art director: Olga Saveleva; Laser designers: Anna Usova, Mikhail Shebukov, Anastasia Shcherbakova, Dmitry Madrakhimov; Technical specialist: Andrey Sokov
Music: OdinMann, "Emotional Intro Motivational Cinematic Trailer"
We undertook an ambitious laser show project involving both beam show effects and mapping. It involved both integrating advanced choreography with dancers together with custom made visual content to enhance the performance. This approach posed significant challenges, primarily in synchronizing laser effects with live movement. The creative aspect involved using laser projections to interact with both the dancers and the LED screens, creating dynamic visuals and landscapes that shifted with the performance. The result was a stunning blend of technology and art.
Credits: Programming and operators: Love Karlsson, Pieterjan Ruysch; Laser tech and Laser Safety Officer: Johan Lindell; Design and LED content: Green Wall Designs
Music: Maria Sur, "When I'm Gone"
This was a national music prize TV show. The band wanted to enhance their performance with a stunning laser display. This innovative lighting setup aimed to elevate the visual impact of the performance, adding energy and drama to the live broadcast.
The challenge was to ensure seamless integration of the lasers with the show's technical requirements while maintaining a visually captivating experience. The creative approach focused on using the lasers to create striking visual effects that framed the band and highlighted key moments in the performance.
Credits: Programming and operator: Emil Nyman; Laser tech: Love Karlsson; Laser Safety Officer: Johan Lindell
Music: Lars Winnerbäck, "Rosor och Champagne"
We wanted to use lasers to give this act a signature look, using the length of the venue (which was more than 150 feet) to make a long perspective with the beams. Static lasers, calm transitions and clean use of colors worked well with the pace of the song.
Credits: Laser designers: Jan Martin Svensson Vågen, Johan Lindell; Lighting designer: Lars Johan Helgeland
Music: Emma Steinbakken, "Hold My Breath"
This is a one hour music performance which was shot in a very special restaurant, where half of the building is submerged underwater with a large panorama window where you can watch the aquatic life, located at the southernmost tip of Norway. Live laser use was a good way of giving the performance visual punch.
Credits: Laser designer: Jan Martin Svensson Vågen; Director and producer: Martin Litwicki; Lights: Marius Flatnes
Music: Matoma, "Love for the Beat"
This show was made as part of a big New Year's Eve performance for children. It tells the story of a boy who finds the key to launch a magical carousel that brings children to meet the characters appearing in famous cartoons.
The synthesis of laser- and 3D-video graphics allows us to create realistic dimensional images on a mesh screen.
The entire performance with our laser show was shown for two weeks on a seamless 24w x 12h meter mesh screen, three times a day in a concert hall for 6,000 spectators.
Credits: Laser graphics and video design, Kirill Nikitochkin; technical director and project manager, Taras Viter; laser operator, Mikhail Smirnov
Music: Envato Elements
The Tokyo Skytree is 634m high. The frame is assembled in a triangular shape in the area close to ground level, but becomes more cylindrical towards the top. So the slightly twisted frame has a complicated shape.
In order to trace the frame as beautifully as possible within the limited working time, we developed software that can draw laser lines using Bezier curves.
On narrow frames, if the laser is slightly displaced, the laser line will not be visible. The laser effects are excellent because of the accurate tracing, and the shooting stars are falling beautifully.
Credits: Laser designer/programmer, Shunsuke Naoshima; bezier curve tool developer, Yoshi Sato; technical director, Yu Suzuki
Music: Kosuke Anamizu, "Dream Christmas 2023 Tokyo Star Light”
This laser show, combined with video content, was made for the celebration of the city of Taldom. A crane holding a boot in its paws is frozen on the Taldom coat of arms. And this is not surprising, because the Taldom region is a kingdom of swamps and shoemakers. These places have been known since 1677. And almost immediately Taldom became the shoemaker's capital and a major merchant center. Architectural and historical monuments have been preserved to this day, which are also included in this show, created for the residents of this city. The show was presented on the main square on Taldom City Day holiday.
Credits: Laser graphics and video design, Kirill Nikitochkin; technical director and project manager, Taras Viter; laser operator, Mikhail Smirnov
Music: Richard Harvey, “The Seven Seas”
“Willow” tells the story of a relationship, initially visually represented by waving lines, which is then “severed” with a knife. When we see the waving lines again (the male), it is accompanied by a grouping of sparkles (the female), who is chasing the memory of the relationship but cannot quite once again form the union. The willow represents the dead relationship and the pagan-like character (from the Taylor Swift video) is the female who is attempting to conjure the memories of the relationship in an attempt to bring them back together. In the end are they reunited or is it just a dream?
Credits: Graphics: Rupert Morse; Beams: Brian Adams
Music: Taylor Swift, "Willow"
Set in a modern fantasy kingdom in which its queen is usurped by a cunning con-man. The queen is trapped inside her castle, lying in
wait. The serpent represents her inner strength and of the transformation she must undergo. A warm color palette for her contrasts the cool colors for him.
Pre-chorus sections: she strides from her prison of darkness, growing larger until serpents are hinted at, foreshadowing her transformation. Ultimately she is transformed, the cobra representing her victory over her captor.
Abstracts: designed with jagged, fang-like edges also represent the arcing serpent coils.
Credits: Graphics and Beams: Brian Adams
Music: Taylor Swift, "Look What You Made Me Do"
"Style" is about a couple and focuses on their beauty and fashion sense.
The abstract wavy lines are like arms reaching out to one another, engaged in a dance.
I imagined a couple, driving on a darkened road late at night with the headlights shinning on the broken white lines (represented by the geometrical shapes) passing by to the beat.
I took a more stylistic, single-line drawing approach, with minimal blanking, for the graphics of the models so that the “draw on and off” effect would be more artistic, as if drawn and then erased, live, by the artist.
Credits: Graphics: Derek Mackey; Beams: Brian Adams
Music: Taylor Swift, "Style (Taylor's Version)"
Laser effects performed live as well as pre-programmed, during the all-night music festival.
Credits: Laser designers: Jarosław Nadolny, Jakub Marcinek, Maciej Łukaszewski
Music: Various
The goal was to create an immersive show for music fans attending this festival.
Credits: Maciej Bubula, Max Bubula, Alex Bubula, Rober Bubula, Wlodek Duval
Music: Various
Laser effects performed live as well as pre-programmed, during the all-night music festival.
Credits: Laser designers: Jarosław Nadolny, Jakub Marcinek, Maciej Łukaszewski
Music: Various
This live performance show has been created as a result of several creative hours together with a professional popping dance artist visiting our studio.
The story line is about a crazy guy who gets trapped by laser beams and is trying to escape by taking over the control of the laser beams. At the happy end, he's even making friends with this beautiful light.
Credits: Show design: Tobias Gebuhr; Dance artist: Pascal Kozuch
Music: Robotboyz, “Remix”
Roxstar is an empowering and celebratory theatrical adventure that is all about girl power, positivity, friendship, resilience, and strength from the perspective of a female trying to make it in a man’s world. It’s a feel-good show with a rocking “sing-along” soundtrack and breathtaking production that will appeal to all ages, Guaranteed to have the audience up on their feet and wanting more. This performance was held as a two-show preview of the full production.
Credits: Production logistics and equipment: Pyrotecnico; Lead producer, Creative, and Light design: Nick Whitehouse; Creative producer: Jacy DeFilippo; Director: William Baker; Executive producer: Russell Mattox; Laser programming and technician: Nisha Ramnath
Music: Jacy De Filippo, Laura Wright, Kayla Santos, and Drew Lake singing "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" by Journey. Arrangement by Robert Zahn
The flying drummers at Prestonwood Church in Dallas, Texas have become one of the highlights of the Christmas season. For The Gift of Christmas 2023, there were 14 performances. Thousands of attendees were able to see the show at the church.
This visually stunning multimedia event is complete with a nearly 1,000-member cast and choir, live orchestra, flying drummers, and projection screen automation. The programming was created to emphasize the music while avoiding projection panel movements and keeping the drummer performers safe.
Credits: Production logistics and equipment: Pyrotecnico; Laser programmer: Nisha Ramnath; Laser technician: Matt McCoy; SFX lead: Dave Cortell; Creative director: Andy Pearson; Technical director: Greg Norgeot; Production designer: Matt Webb; Lighting designer: David Seitz; Stage manager: Bryan Bailey
Music: Prestonwood Worship, "Drummer Boy"
This is a loose narrative about a lone wolf cowboy who learns to trust, represented by giving the last of his water to a flower in the desert. Upon giving without reservation, the narrative of the chorus graphics change and it is no longer others who are unstoppable, but him.
Credits: Laser programming: Nisha Ramnath; Equipment: MaxTENN; Show producer: Pinnacle Lasers
Music: Sia, "Unstoppable"
As part of the celebration of Science Day, a special show was created to commemorate the history of scientific achievement. The show features images of various scientific breakthroughs, from the Big Bang theory to artificial intelligence and beyond.
Credits: Art director: Olga Saveleva; Laser designers: Anna Usova, Mikhail Shebukov, Anastasia Shcherbakova, Dmitry Madrakhimov
Music: Bright Light, "Science Technology"
We all know the allure and delusions lasers can cause our senses. This show tries to capture that feeling of disorientation and seeing multiples.
Credits: Laser programming: Nisha Ramnath; Equipment: MaxTENN; Show producer: Pinnacle Lasers
Music: Dua Lipa, "Hallucinate"
This year's fairy tale tells the story of the elves, who organized a little party after Santa left the workshop.
Credits: Laser designer: Anna Nadolna
Music: VictoryAudio, “Merry Christmas Rock”; LuckyBlackCat, “Christmas Upbeat”
Graphic show prepared on the occasion of the city's 511th birthday. Graphics telling the history of the city and specially prepared laser mapping on a building over 60m wide created an unforgettable spectacle.
Credits: Laser designers: Anna Nadolna, Jakub Marcinek
Music: Micrah, “Energetic Dubstep Dance”; OdinMann, “A History”
Laser animation celebrating the reopening of the city's City Hall after a major renovation.
Credits: Laser designer: Jakub Marcinek
Music: Musical Smile, “Dubstep Trailer”; Inplus Music, “The Exciting”; Kakadu Creation, “Dramatic Emotional Cinematic”
This song is so sensuous and seductive. I wanted to make a show that reflected those qualities and was strange and slow, but flowed from scene to scene. I kept the color palette mostly to reds, blues, and purples because they looked like the sound of her voice.
Credit: Christopher Short
Music: Aurora, “Teardrop”
I recently became fascinated by the possibilities of laser “moire patterns”, and created this piece to explore some possibilities. I needed to get infinitesimal rotations in order to see the wealth of patterns, and found that slow moving music in different registers worked well. I programmed the laser equipment to listen to the music and generate MIDI signals that slowly changed with the music. The MIDI signals were then used to display the graphics changing with the music.
Credits: Laser and MIDI programming: Tim Walsh
Music: Tim Walsh,"Radiator Music"
When creating shows, I like being able to use all colours available to me without being confined to any particular palette. When I first heard "Icarus" and imagined it as something vibrantly colourful, I thought it'd be the perfect piece for me to take on.
I also like my shows to tell a kind of 'story' where the beam content is connected from beginning to end and moves in one continuous motion wherever possible.
As a final note, this entry is the first show I've created while having access to a laser. As a result it has taught me a great deal about programming.
Credits: Laser design and programming: Justyn Connor
Music: Madeon, "Icarus"
40 years ago the movie Beverly Hills Cop appeared in cinemas including the synthesizer music “Axel F” from Harold Faltermeyer. This year we used a remixed version to capture the power and dynamic of this song and create a rousing and powerful beamshow.
Credits: Programmer: Markus Voggenberger; Camera, Setup and Laser operator: Helmut Gruber
Music: John van Beat, "Axel Foley"
A funky upbeat show to vibe with, performed on a 30k scanner.
Credit: Nathan Jin
Music: I.Y.F.F.E; Auratic; au5, "Sweet"
This show uses a number of my favorite concepts to chase the dream that pulls you through the whole thing and leaves you with “What did I just watch?”
Credit: Nathan Jin
Music: Space Laces, “In The Place”
The music is melodic and uplifting, evoking feelings of nostalgia and longing. Its soaring melodies and upbeat rhythm create a sense of hope and optimism, making it an ideal choice for a laser show
Credit: Theo Petrides
Music: Draeden, "Way Back Home"
The track is powerful and epic music characterized by its dramatic orchestral elements and intense rhythms. This song has a dynamic and cinematic quality that lends itself well to this show.
In this laser show, the precise choreography would be essential to capture the grandeur and intensity of the music. The lasers could be synchronized to the dramatic crescendos and rhythmic beats of the song.
Credit: Theo Petrides
Music: Really Slow Motion, "The Bow Factor"
A permanent installation with two lasers set up on each side of a small ravine, highlighting the tree branches and forest floor while amplified with fog. The laser sequence is synchronized to audio using MTC and RTP MIDI. The varianced laser projectors are installed and aimed according to the American-legal distance for safe audience access. A camera system is installed throughout the entire night-walk path to provide additional safety and monitoring. There are many bears in the area which required an additional safety protocol!
Credits: Concept, design, installation: Moment Factory; Programmers: Derek Garbos and Nicolas Squire
Music: Moment Factory, custom soundtrack
This installation is in the courtyard of a spa hotel. Customers were complaining about a boring view. The hotel came up with an idea to use lasers for lightshows. A total of 12 animation shows (one for each month) were created based on the customer’s scenario. Shows run automatically. An animation runs at every full and half hour, and an atmospheric runs on the quarter/three quarters.
Challenges were to find a good balance between hotel expectations and technical and creative possibilities, also educating animators to achieve good laser-specific result. Now customers are happy and the hotel charges extra for formerly cheaper rooms.
Credits: All laser-related part of the project (including converting and optimizing 2D animation to laser): Kullar Laiapea; Custom 2D animations: Erik Heinsalu (Bop Animations)
Music: None
Presented at a multidisciplinary art festival, this installation takes an everyday object, a curtain moving by a breeze. As it is stripped from its natural surroundings it becomes a protagonist in a dark theatrical space. Technically, the behaviour of the curtain is generated live by a computer simulation and is, in a subtle way, influenced by the movement of spectators. A curved mirror corrects the angle of the scanned beam, making it parallel in one direction, while keeping the angle (and thus depth) in the other direction.
Credits: Concept and realization: Club Efemeer (Arnaud De Wolf & Maarten Vanermen); Coproduction: Werktank (Leuven, Belgium), Recto-Verso (Québec, Canada), Expanded Scenography (Brussels, Belgium); with the support of the Flemish Authorities, du ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec (MRIF), du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Music: None
This is another piece of the crashed alien saucer that provided the 2023 ILDA Award-winning Molecular Disrupter. The aliens use a form of lumia to communicate through subspace, and this shows the SOS black box that is phoning home for help. Aliens may show up at any moment to recover this. There are four lasers inside, the usual RGB plus one of the new 589nm jobbies. They shine on a piece of plastic painted white on the inside, acting as a rear-projection screen. The outer decorations are fractal patterns, evidently a form of alien graffiti.
Credit: Laser artist: Mike Gould
Music: None
This is a 1:12 scale model of an outdoor permanent interactive laser art installation I am proposing for several municipalities, destined to be built in a park or other public space. Using CaFE, an online clearing house for people seeking artists, I have applied to about 20 cities seeking art works.
The maquette features 3 lasers, back-lighting a cylinder painted white on the inside. The final version will feature a cylinder 6’ wide by 8’ tall, and the lasers will be controlled by the movements of the viewers.
Credits: In charge: Mike Gould; Engineer: Wayne Gillis; Logistics: Salli Christenson
Music: None
This enigmatic art installation is experienced in an urban environment in the vicinity of water. It challenges our reduced attention to the small species in our habitat by a very simple intervention.
Credits: Concept and realization: Club Efemeer (Arnaud De Wolf & Maarten Vanermen); Production: Expanded Scenography
Music: None
This is a walking version of a laser show: a backpack with a battery-powered RGB lumia projector shining up onto a white umbrella. This was for FoolMoon in Ann Arbor, a night-time art event. I did a one-man photonic perambulation with a parasol.
The unit weighs 16 lbs. due to the small lead acid battery. The projector is a prototype I built 12 years ago in preparation for Art Prize in Grand Rapids. The enclosure is a piece of 4" sewer pipe, with a 1/4" aluminum base plate secured with a hexagonal rod. I updated the 532nm greenie to a 520nm jobbie, as I knew it would be too cold for a DPSS laser.
Credit: Laser artist: Mike Gould
Music: None
This was one "installation" at a small town light festival. An innovative (or at least unusual) solution is that a a very big bonfire was constructed specially for the lasershow with additional stumps surrounding the fire to create more smoke in the air. No additional hazers or smoke machines were used. People enjoyed the sound of the burning bonfire while looking at light playing in the air and on trees.
Credit: Kullar Laiapea
Music: None
Winners selected by ILDA Members viewing photos online and voting via email
See photo above
I've worked with the band Brit Floyd off and on for 20 years now. They asked me to start a laser company so that I can supply them with lasers for their tour after they switch band management. I used Depence 2 Laser Previs to start then came up with what I call a “Magical Garden of Light Moment” to frame the moment and elevate the importance of this piece of music and its importance politically and spiritually. My goal was to frame this moment and paint the band's talents in a good light.
Credits: Lasers: Tyler LeDent; Brit Floyds Musical Director: Damian Darlington
Music: Pink Floyd, “Brain Damage/Eclipse”, as performed by the tribute band Brit Floyd
Zooming in on a scanning laser beam, the air particles are captured and repeat over a 1/15th exposure. The color variations are due to the particle movement in relation to the RGB beam combining.
Credit: Photographer: Derek Garbos
This picture illustrates our ongoing research on ephemeral light sculptures, sculptural shapes and volumes without a tangible body. Using long exposure photography, a rotating laser beam is rendered as a three-dimensional shape.
Credit: Arnaud De Wolf
The Laser Jockey competition was held 26 September 2024 during the ILDA Conference. Attendees viewed the competitors’ live performance, then voted for their favorites. The top three vote-getters received First, Second and Third Place in this category.
1st: Nicolas Squire, LaserTech Canada Inc.
2nd: Tim Walsh, Laser Spectacles, Inc.
3rd: Derek Garbos, LaserTech Canada Inc.
For more information on how the judging and scoring was done, see the "2024 judging and scores" section below.
General and IDN Judges
Derek Garbos, Tim Hallmark, Horacio Pugliese
Lasershow Converter Blender is a free add-on ("plug-in") that allows the free, open-source Blender 3D graphics software to generate laser frames and animations virtually instantly. Among its many features:
• Blender renders directly into BEYOND and thus, there is no need to use a separate conversion process.
• Renders extremely quickly — for most scenes, in real time.
• Incorporates lighting, shading, shadows and textures, and shader nodes directly from the objects.
• Allows for the use of hidden line removal with Grease Pencil Strokes.
• Can be used to create and export 3D objects for direct use in other laser programs for further real-time manipulation.
A 400-watt single-beam RGB sky laser designed for permanent installations at venues and landmarks, making them impossible to overlook at night.
Built as a robust and IP65-certified container equipped with a closed-circuit water cooling unit, the Architect laser projector outputs a 400-watt large-format full-colour static laser beam. It is ready to be used permanently in most outdoor environments. The Architect offers better visibility from great distances than any other system on the market known to us.
MoboLaser is a groundbreaking mobile app for iOS and Android that transforms laser show control by integrating with BEYOND and QuickShow software.
This app provides users with mobile access to a range of powerful features, including Workspace Pages and Grid Cues, real-time control, geometric correction, zone management, and Quick Text for live text projections. Users also benefit from comprehensive logs, TimeCode synchronization, information on active FB4 controllers, and the Pangolin Wiki resources and documentation.
MoboLaser significantly streamlines the management and execution of laser shows.
The Helios OpenIDN adapter is a small device with an Ethernet port, Wi-Fi antenna, and USB port. You can plug a Helios Laser DAC (an USB to ISP-DB25 adapter) into the USB port, and then use either Ethernet or Wi-Fi to reach the DAC from your laser software on the same network.
The adapter acts as an IDN server which forwards input sent to the IDN server to the Helios DAC.
The adapter is based on a tiny Linux computer which runs the recently published OpenIDN framework originally developed at the University of Bonn, with additional changes to the software and operating system.
IDN-File-Player plays back files containing laser stream and audio data formatted using the IDN-File specification. The software is user friendly and can be fully controlled via a graphical user interface. It runs on Windows, Linux or macOS operating systems.
Features include:
• The assignment of laser and audio tracks to IDN consumer services.
• Simple geometric modification is possible (scale, translation, flip, swap XY, rotate, shear).
• A playlist can be created that holds a list of selected configuration files. It is quite flexible to prepare a sequence of laser shows for playback.
The IDN-Android-Viz is an Android app that combines several ILDA Digital Network laser stream preview visualization styles in a single software system. It runs on tablets and smartphones in 2D and 3D preview, it runs on smartphones in CardBoard mode, and it runs on Meta Oculus Quest in VR mode.
The IDN-Android-Viz combines the functionality of the two separate, already existing programs IDN-Toolbox (for 2D visualization of IDN laser streams) and IDN-Laser-VR (for 3D visualization as well as VR with sophisticated VR glasses like HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or similar).
In 2024, ILDA received 111 artistic video entries and 17 photography entries from 33 different Member companies. There were seven general and three IDN Fenning Technical Award entries from five ILDA Members and one non-member. (Non-members can submit for the IDN award.). There were five Career Achievement Award nominees voted on by Members.
Judging dates
• The artistic entries were judged in June 2024 by an online panel of 15 judges (listed earlier on this webpage). Each category had three judges assigned. This was done to ensure judges did not evaluate any category where they had entries, and to spread out the workload of viewing so many entries.
• Laser Photography and Career Achievement Award entries were judged by ILDA Members voting online, 22 May - 3 June, 2024.
• Fenning technical entries were judged via online discussion of the three-member panel (listed earlier on this webpage). The judges voted 31 May 2024.
• Laser Jockey entries were performed and judged in person by attendees during the ILDA Conference in Wrocław, Poland on 26 September 2024.
Judges’ scores
The 2024 artistic judges viewed the entries in their assigned categories via a secure, private video link. They rated each entry on a 0-10 scale according to four factors: Technical Competency, Artistic Competency, Quality and Variety of Laser Effects, and Visuals Following Music (sync). The scores were added up.
The highest scoring entry in a category won First Place, the second-highest won Second Place, and the third-highest won Third Place. In case of a tie, judges were asked to review the tied entries and express their preference. The entry with more judges' preferences won the higher placement.
Artistic awards results
For the artistic awards (including Laser Photography but not including Laser Jockey), in 2024 there were 44 winning entries, from 22 different ILDA Members. This means that two-thirds of Members who submitted for an artistic award won First, Second or Third Place.
Below is some information about the entries' scores. This may be of interest to persons who submitted in 2024, as well as those submitting for future Awards:
• The "Results for all entrants" spreadsheet lists all of the 2024 artistic Award entries, and the scores they received from the judges. (For this public version, the show names and entrant names have been removed.) The most important column is "AVG. SCORE". This has been color coded, so that green means an entry received an above-average score in its category, yellow indicates an average score, and orange & red indicates a below-average score. The Average Score is used to determine the First, Second and Third Place winners.
• All Members who entered the 2024 Awards were emailed their row numbers and entry names. Here is an example, using made-up information. They can match this information with the row numbers in the anonymous "Results for all entrants" spreadsheet, so the Member can know how his or her entries did, relative to others in the same category. If the judges made notes on the entry, those notes are included.
• The Laser Photography category was voted on by Members making a preference ranking of all entrants. Sixty Members voted. A vote for a person's 1st favorite gained 17 "points" since there were 17 entries. A vote as 2nd favorite gained 16 points, a 3rd favorite gained 15 points, a 4th favorite gained 14 points, etc. The entry with the highest point total received First Place; the entry with the second-highest point total received Second Place, etc. The scores are shown below. Only the names of the First, Second and Third Place winners have been publicly released; the other entries remain anonymous.
Laser Jockey competition scoring
The Laser Jockey competition was voted by persons attending the ILDA Conference in Wrocław, Poland on 26 September 2024. Each of the six contestants played live to a randomly selected piece of music. The Laser Jockey contestants, and the voting audience were live in the Conference laser theater..
All attendees in the room, except for the contestants, were given a ballot. The contestants played in a random order and were unknown to the attendee voters, who gave each performance a score from 0 to 10.
There were 35 ballots received. Scoring was done by adding up the score that each contestant received from the voters. The contestant with the highest number of points received First Place. The First Place winner, Derek Garbos of LaserTech Canada, won with 269 total points. Second Place went to Nicolas Squire, also of LaserTech Canada, with 248 points. Third Place went to Anders Edström of Laserimage AB with 222 points.
ILDA requires its Members to perform safe and legal laser shows, and to acknowledge basic principles of laser show safety.
Beginning with the 2014 Awards, all entrants submitting videos have explicitly certified that their laser effects depicted met safety standards, as well as all applicable laser safety laws and regulations (including laws for audience scanning) in the location where the show was performed.
• Entries filmed in a studio, with no audience, can use any power and can scan anywhere, even if the original show was intended for an audience.
• However, if the video depicts an audience watching the laser show, or has lasers near performers, then the show must be safe for the audience and performers, and must comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Documentation must be provided to ILDA about the show’s irradiance at the point of closest audience access, and any other safety measures that were implemented.
• The above documentation is also required if an entry depicts beams in an area where an audience might be, such as an empty tradeshow floor or an empty auditorium. This is because a video of unsafe beams in an audience area gives an impression that the same show would be run with an audience present.
Since 2014, ILDA has reviewed every entry for any potential safety issues.
ILDA has the right to remove or disqualify an entry if, in our sole opinion, 1) the show violates or appears to violate safety standards, laws and/or regulations, and/or 2) the show does not have sufficient documentation of safety and legal compliance.
Note that despite ILDA’s review process, ILDA cannot absolutely certify that an Awards entry is safe and legal. This is ultimately the responsibility of the entrant.
IMPORTANT: If you have a laser or a laser projector, do NOT attempt to perform the type of audience-scanning effects seen in ILDA Award-winning videos 1) without qualified expert safety planning and supervision and 2) without prior written permission from appropriate authorities. These authorities may include federal, state and local laser safety regulators, venue operators, and insurance companies.
For more information, visit our other ILDA websites:
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