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2022 TIP Prize Winners

TEC Talk

The objective of this presentation is for attendees to have a better understanding of the inventions that won the 2022 TIP prizes and be able to recreate these inventions for use in their own theatres.

1st Prize: Soldering Wire Holder (HO, Cathy Ka Po and LO, Yan Yi Stephanie, Hong Kong)
Nowadays, much scenery contains led strips or dc motors (something that needs a power supply), so there are many wires that sometimes need to be re-wired. Imagine you are on a 4-meter mobile elevating work platform and you have to rewire an LED strip, you are holding a solder gun and you only have one hand free to hold your wire and LED. Not everyone has a surgeon-level steady hand. It's not easy to use one hand for soldering those little points together. You need something to make the LED and wire stay put. Learn how to make your very own soldering wire holder.

2nd Prize: Acoustic Circles (THIRY, Joris, Belgium)
The hall where I work had poor acoustic qualities. Due to the irregular shape of the ceiling, hanging curtains to reduce reflections wasn't evident. Next idea was to stretch damping fabric on to frames. Rectangular frames should be sturdy, to be able to stretch the fabric nice and tight, easy to mount, easy to produce and on top of that fireproof and inexpensive. Eventually I came up with a design that did the job : theater fabric stretched on a circular frame made out of PVC tubing for electric wiring. While the tension of the fabric would deform lightweight rectangular frames, it keeps the circular ones in shape.

3rd Prize: 3D-Printed Cable-Hook for I-Beam (CHIANG, Joe Hsun and RIEDEMANN, Andrew, USA )
This Cable Hook was designed to help store and keep cables organized in a trap room of a theater. It was printed with a Envovo X1 3d printer, using Repetier and Slic3r. The piece was originally designed in AutoDesk Inventor and exported as an STL file. The file is then uploaded to Repetier, which is a program that interfaces with this 3d printer. Slic3er was then used to create the interior infill and shell layers of the piece which will be exported back to Repetier for the final print. An important consideration at this point is infill pattern and density of the print. Slic3er offers multiple patterns and densities to choose from. In regards to infill, using less than 20% infill density will distort your print and using more than 60% infill density has diminishing returns. For this piece, the narrower portions were printed with 100% infill and the top, and thicker portions of the hook were printed with a 60% infill "line" pattern. The material used for printing was 1.75mm filament PLA (Polylactic Acid).

Presenters: Cathy Ka Po Ho, Joris Thiry and Joe( Hsun) Chiang.

Cathy Ka Po Ho - Born in Vancouver, Canada, currently living in Taipei, Taiwan. Ho is a technical designer working in the field of theater, installation art and public art. She holds a Bachelor Degrees of Fine Arts degree from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) .

Joris Thiry - Joris Thiry was born in 1965. After his lutier studies he kind of tumbled from one job in to another : stage hand, producing design lighting, sign painter, guitar roadie and as up to now, stage technician. He has always been into simple inventive solutions, such as an apparatus to unscrew lamps in hard to reach places, stabilizing a washing machine by inflating bag-in-a-box bags, a wing bolt on a drill to drive wing nuts and the "jansjörre", tip award's first price in 2017.

Joe( Hsun) Chiang - Joe is currently enrolled at Yale University in the David Geffen School of Drama, Technical Design and Production Program. He was born and raised in Taiwan. Prior to coming to Yale, he was a freelance theatre Technical Director in Taiwan. He is eager to practice technical support and management for the international entertainment industry.