Event: Traveling Hedgehog Festival
Location: Krulli Industrial Complex, Tallinn, Estonia
Dates: Spring 2025 (2 nights)
Attendees: 2,500+
Venue Size: 9,000+ square meters across multiple halls
Stages: 11 performance areas
My Role: Main stage lighting designer & programmer, Soft Landing installation designer, festival-wide decorative lighting designer
Location: Krulli Industrial Complex, Tallinn, Estonia
Dates: Spring 2025 (2 nights)
Attendees: 2,500+
Venue Size: 9,000+ square meters across multiple halls
Stages: 11 performance areas
My Role: Main stage lighting designer & programmer, Soft Landing installation designer, festival-wide decorative lighting designer
Traveling Hedgehog is Estonia's Burning Man—a costume party and creative celebration organized by the Estonian Burning Man community.
The festival centers around their art car "Traveling Hedgehog," a minivan transformed into an aluminum hedgehog sculpture with a rooftop dance floor and individually controllable LED spikes.
The 2025 theme was "Kõik on õige" ("Everything is Right")—celebrating radical self-expression and community care. As long as you consider and love the people around you, everything you choose to do is right.
I built the original Hedgehog art car for Burning Man 2019 and have collaborated with this community for years. They gave me creative freedom: "Let your mind run wild within the budget."
The Constraints
We needed to transform 9,000 square meters of industrial space into an immersive multi-stage festival on a tight budget across 11 stages.
The aging venue had unreliable electrical infrastructure. We drew approximately 250A total (2x 125A circuits), with backup generators staged outside for power failure.
As part of a 100-person team, I coordinated lighting across the main stage, a separate immersive installation (Soft Landing), a chill-out area with custom set pieces, and festival-wide decorative lighting—while staying within equipment and workforce budgets.
I approached the festival as three distinct experiences:
1. Main Stage: "Sunrise in the Industrial Wasteland"
The main stage needed to capture the energy of electronic music in a Burning Man aesthetic. I designed an 8-meter diameter sun as the centerpiece—half covered in white projection fabric with moving gobos, half adorned with over 100 LED pixel bars creating dynamic rays of light.
This sun became the visual anchor: radiating warmth and energy into the industrial space, transforming concrete and steel into a sunrise celebration.
2. Chillout Area: "Surreal Sanctuary"
In collaboration with the set design team, I co-designed an otherworldly relaxation zone featuring:
- A retrofitted trolley bus serving as a drum and bass stage
- A "campfire" constructed from vintage television sets
- A 3-meter illuminated inflatable moon
- A 3-meter tall wolf statue howling at the moon
- A regular bus converted into a lounge space
- A retrofitted trolley bus serving as a drum and bass stage
- A "campfire" constructed from vintage television sets
- A 3-meter illuminated inflatable moon
- A 3-meter tall wolf statue howling at the moon
- A regular bus converted into a lounge space
Each element received custom lighting solutions to create a dreamlike, surrealist environment where festival-goers could decompress.
3. Soft Landing: Immersive Sanctuary
(See separate case study for full details on this 10x10x10m volumetric installation)
Main Stage Equipment:
- 32x Acme Orion beam fixtures (dynamic movement)
- 20x Acme Pixel Line IP (architectural wash)
- 16x Astera AX7 (wall wash and accent)
- 4x Acme Oxygen (front light)
- 2x Acme AECO 5 profile fixtures (gobo projection onto sun)
- 100+ 1-meter LED pixel bars (sun rays)
- 3x 4-output LED controllers (pixel bar control)
- Chamsys MagicQ MQ500 console
- MacBook Pro M1 running Resolume Arena 7
- Novation LaunchControl XL MK2 MIDI controller for Resolume
- 32x Acme Orion beam fixtures (dynamic movement)
- 20x Acme Pixel Line IP (architectural wash)
- 16x Astera AX7 (wall wash and accent)
- 4x Acme Oxygen (front light)
- 2x Acme AECO 5 profile fixtures (gobo projection onto sun)
- 100+ 1-meter LED pixel bars (sun rays)
- 3x 4-output LED controllers (pixel bar control)
- Chamsys MagicQ MQ500 console
- MacBook Pro M1 running Resolume Arena 7
- Novation LaunchControl XL MK2 MIDI controller for Resolume
The 8-Meter Sun:
The sun centerpiece required a custom approach: LED pixel bars arranged as rays (addressable for animation), white projection fabric stretched across half the diameter, AECO 5 profile fixtures projecting animated gobos onto fabric, and structural support to safely suspend 8 meters of lighting.
"This is the best event I've been to in years—it feels like Tomorrowland, not something in Estonia." — Festival attendee
The lighting received overwhelming positive feedback across social media. People expressed amazement that this scale of production was achievable in Estonia. Newcomers were particularly impressed by the immersive quality of the entire venue.
I've worked with the Traveling Hedgehog community since building their art car in 2019. This was our fourth large-scale festival collaboration. Their continued trust reflects our shared creative language and mutual respect for pushing boundaries on limited budgets.
The warm, welcoming atmosphere supported the festival's "Everything is Right" philosophy—creating a space where self-expression and community care could flourish visually.
Multi-stage festival production?
I coordinate complex lighting installations across large venues, balancing creative vision with budget realities and technical constraints. From main stage spectacle to intimate artistic spaces, I design cohesive visual experiences that elevate entire events.
