The World Fireworks Championship

Sad news to report, the death of Otto Piene.

Piene was a giant of the post-war modern German art scene, and renowned for his enormous often illuminated, open-air sculptures that made extensive use of technology. One of his most famous pieces was the huge illuminated Rainbow, unveiled at the end of the 1972 Munich Olympics.

As well as his mastery of lit sculptures he was an exponent of Rauchbilder (smoke pictures), where pigmented paper is set alight and the resulting soot used to create images.

There is an obiturary to Piene here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28364515

and you can see some of his work here on Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/tag:otto+piene

The World Fireworks Championship is set for an exciting return to the international stage with the simple aim of becoming one of the world’s great travelling arts events. On the back of a new joint venture between event producer, World Fireworks Productions Ltd and one of the world’s leading major event specialists, The Sports Consultancy, today sees the launch of a process to identify a host city for the event from 2015 onwards.

The new look World Fireworks Championship will blend the very best in pyromusical performances (fireworks choreographed to music) with The Sports Consultancy’s experience in creating and marketing world-class events. The 2015 World Fireworks Championship will see six of the world’s most celebrated fireworks companies compete for their countries over three unforgettable weekends, with the performers vying to become World Fireworks Champion. Alongside this spectacle is planned to be an inspirational, interactive ‘Art of Light Festival’ creating full weekends of innovative, family orientated exhibitions and installations.

Announcing the launch of the updated competition, Angus Buchanan, Joint Managing Director, The Sports Consultancy added: “We are incredibly excited about the opportunity that the World Fireworks Championship has to offer a host city, as one of only a few major arts events that move from city to city around the world delivering very significant economic returns.”

Global travel provider, TUI Event Group comes on board as the event’s first commercial partner and will create and market bespoke travel packages to the host destination. Commenting on the partnership Chad Lion-Chachet, TUI Event Group Managing Director said: “We believe the World Fireworks Championship event will be an enormously attractive destination marketing package. The event blends fireworks’ universal appeal with the ability to showcase the city in, literally, the best possible light. We’re really delighted to work with the team to develop the event as a “once in a lifetime” experience.”

The 2010 World Fireworks Championships in Oman attracted an audience of over 750,000 making it the largest ever spectator event in the Sultanate’s history and was won by Lacroix-Ruggieri representing France.

Commenting on the event, World Fireworks Productions CEO, Mark Wooding said: “The 2010 Championship in Oman was incredibly successful, by far exceeding expectations and creating huge public excitement and enormous crowds. Our plans for the future promise to take the Championship to new heights and we’re really looking forward to finding a host partner to share in our development of the World Fireworks Championship to make it one of the world’s greatest festivals.”

Potential host cities have been invited to submit an expression of interest by contacting the organisers at hosting@worldfireworkschampionship.com.

A spectacular fireworks display, centred on the world famous Eiffel Tower, marked Bastille Day celebrations on 14th July in Paris.

The audience for the show is estimated at over 500,000, with millions more watching on TV. Here’s a taste of the display, and the audience reaction.

http://youtu.be/5OhE5QGRJ0s

The huge crowds demonstrated yet again the incredible enthusiasm people have for fireworks, and that there is no better way to celebrate a major public event, than with a brilliantly choreographed display.

Marking the centenary of World War 1, the display was created by Christophe Berthonneau of the French company Groupe F. It demonstrated the great skills that go into producing a truly spectacular pyrotechnic performance.

It is just these creative skills that the World Fireworks Championship will demonstrate and will encourage, as six of the world’s leading pyrotechnic designers create unforgettable pyro-musical performances as they compete to be crowned ‘World Champion’ in the world’s largest pyro-musical competition.

For those aficionados of great fireworks displays have a look at the display by Pirotecnica Morsani at the Cannes Fireworks Festival. As befits Cannes it’s got a strong movie theme.

We first came across Morsani at the Montreal Championship in 2011. They produce very high quality and artistic pyro-muscial performances, amply demonstrated by this video.

(Note the camera position is quite a long way back from the display. It shows the full display, which is good, but perhaps loses a bit of the impact the audience would have enjoyed on Cannes’ famous Croisette).