Client

Utah Jazz

Date

2023 · Delta Center, Salt Lake City

Role

Creative Technology · Lighting Design

With

Julian Cole-Nieves, fabrication

LED sculpture of a stepped mountain skyline, each ridge lit in a white-to-purple gradient, seen straight on with no people in frame

Overview

The Mountain Wall is a 12 by 8 foot LED sculpture of a stepped mountain skyline we built for the Utah Jazz in 2023. It was made as the backdrop for the video announcing the team's Purple Mountain City Edition jersey, with Lauri Markkanen filmed in front of it. Since then it has lived at the Delta Center as a photo op backdrop, sitting on a static gradient, and as the background for the arena's Team DJ.

The Jazz's 2023-24 City Edition reveal, shot in front of the wall.
The video shoot in a dark studio: the mountain wall glowing white and violet at center under a grid of softbox lights, crew silhouetted in the foreground and a court line taped on the floor
The studio on shoot day. The wall is the only thing lit for itself; everything else is lit for camera.

The Build

Julian Cole-Nieves fabricated the mountains, and we designed the profile around the LEDs: each recessed ridge is exactly the length of one five-meter strip. We used WS2812 COB strip instead of discrete pixels so the ridgelines read as one continuous line of light with no hotspots.

The strips attach with velcro. The wall breaks down into three pieces for transport, and we wanted the LEDs to come out and go back in without tools or a soldering iron. A Kulp controller drives the pixels, and a small TouchDesigner tool switches between looks. Every pixel is mapped to its position in space, though the looks that ended up getting used were mostly chasers running along the ridges, which don't need the map at all.

The look switcher: one thumbnail per look, tap to send it to the wall.
A man holding a basketball poses in front of the illuminated mountain sculpture on a marked court in a darkened studio
On set for the jersey shoot. The wall is lit as a set piece, not as signage.

Technical Specifications

Piece
12 x 8 ft stepped mountain skyline, three sections
LED
WS2812 COB strip, one 5 m run per ridge
Mounting
Velcro-attached strips, tool-free removal
Control
Kulp pixel controller
Content
TouchDesigner look switcher, pixel-mapped in space
Fabrication
Julian Cole-Nieves
First use
2023-24 City Edition jersey reveal video, November 2023
Now
Photo backdrop and Team DJ background at the Delta Center

More Views

The mountain sculpture unlit in daylight, mounted against a concrete block wall in the arena concourse

What Else Is Possible

A shape a place already recognizes, a skyline, a landmark, a logo, can be fabricated and lit the same way, then reprogrammed season to season without touching the hardware. It works as a shoot backdrop, a stage element, or a permanent piece of the building.

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