At Expo 2025 Osaka, ECA2 premiered Under the Midnight Rainbow - a nightly multimedia spectacular at the Water Plaza that captivated over two million visitors throughout the event. Designed and produced by ECA2, the show blends poetic storytelling with light, lasers, flames, music, and water to create an immersive experience unlike anything else at the Expo.
At the heart of the performance stands a 20-metre-high Cascade Screen, surrounded by a matrix of more than 300 1D and 3D jets and a wide array of effects forming a dynamic water stage.
To bring this complex choreography to life, db Show Control & Automation designed, manufactured, installed, and programmed the show control system - the technical backbone that ensures every element runs in perfect synchrony.
A trusted partner of ECA2 for more than 15 years, db Show Control & Automation have continually refined their control and supervisor systems to deliver exceptional precision, reliability, and performance across ECA2’s landmark productions worldwide.
Delivering a show of this scale required precise coordination across hundreds of devices and effects.
The system needed to manage fountains, mist screens, flames, lasers, lighting, and audio, all triggered to exact timing.
Reliability was also critical as the show runs nightly in an outdoor setting, where environmental conditions and constant operation demand robust redundancy and seamless failover.
db Show Control & Automation designed and built a turnkey show control platform powered by Medialon by 7thSense, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and flexibility throughout the production.
The function of the show control system is not only the accurate and reliable replay of the show itself, the system is also the front end operator interface for the operation and maintenance teams.
Whilst the system is large in scale and complex in nature, the front end Medialon Manager based show supervisor system presents the relevant status information relating to every piece of technology used within the show. This is done through a simple, intuitive interface, summarised by ‘red’ and ‘green’ indicators summarising the status of the technical equipment by technology or by location.
The operators can drill down deeper in the system, if required to understand in detail any issues that might occur with the technology – from error codes on the water pump VFD’s to the feedback of the flame ignition systems right through to the water jet choreography. Everything operates seamlessly as part of a unified performance.
Under the Midnight Rainbow has quickly become one of Expo 2025’s signature attractions, celebrated for its artistry, precision, and scale.
The project extends db Show Control & Automation’s long-standing partnership with ECA2 and demonstrates the reliability and creative flexibility of 7thSense technology at the centre of world-class live experiences.