Glastonbury Festival 2025 played host to the spectacular return of one of Arcadia’s most iconic installations – the Dragonfly, this year using HIVE hardware and software. Towering above crowds in the Arcadia field, the 13-metre-wide sculpture is built around a repurposed military helicopter, transformed into a living, breathing audiovisual creature brought to life with projection, LED and lighting in perfect harmony. Though not strictly in EI’s normal wheelhouse, we can never resit a look inside this awesome audio-visual creation.
This year marked HIVE’s first full deployment on the Dragonfly. The project – a collaboration between Arcadia, Cucumber Productions, Video Illusions and content creators Astral Projekt – pushed the boundaries of projection mapping and LED playback. At its core: HIVE’s new Beeblade Nexus media engines and supporting suite of advanced software tools, designed for projects where creativity meets complexity.
A radically challenging canvas
The Dragonfly’s body – a decommissioned Sea King helicopter – presented a highly unusual and challenging projection surface. Irregular curves, protruding elements and a compact footprint made conventional video mapping techniques difficult. The addition of LED ‘eyes’ and face illumination brought further creative demands, requiring tight synchronisation between projection, lighting and real-time visuals.
A compact, powerful solution
Replacing a previously rack-based system, HIVE was on patch to deliver a lightweight, energy-efficient and the brand says more affordable alternative – deploying six Beeblade Nexus units housed in three ruggedised Nucleus enclosures. These were distributed across projection towers on either side of the structure and within the Dragonfly’s head.
Commenting on the system upgrade, HIVE’s CTO, Dave Green, says, “With HIVE, we were able to replace an energy-hungry server stack with compact players that delivered the same, if not more, capability – but using far less power and at around a fifth of the cost.”
This efficiency aligned strongly with Arcadia’s sustainability ethos: the Dragonfly is powered entirely by renewable energy provided by Grid Faeries – making HIVE’s low-power architecture a good fit for a large-scale show leading the way in green festival production.
Each Nexus board supported dual 4K NDI inputs with alpha layers – enabling complex video layering and transparency effects. This was essential to manage the real-time feeds created in Unity and TouchDesigner by Astral Projekt, seamlessly blended with a pre-rendered, time-coded 10-minute show sequence dubbed the ‘Arcadia Dragonfly Show’.
HIVE: Software that breaks new ground
Reportedly what really set this installation apart was HIVE’s software – particularly its Obj Map and advanced mapping tools. The team combined multiple techniques to handle the diverse demands of the design:
- Obj Map Tool – mapped content onto the hexagonal LED ‘eyes’ with spherical accuracy, importing UV-mapped geometry files created in Blender.
- Warp Grid Tool – deployed for real-time warping and projection mapping onto the fuselage and tail.
- Pixel Map Page – a new feature used to control Art-Net LED fixtures for the Dragonfly’s facial illumination.
- Timecode Support – HIVE’s rock-solid timecode feature tied the Dragonfly’s 10-minute programmed sequence together, effortlessly playing back pre-rendered animation to the LED “eyes” and all projection surfaces.
HIVE’s advanced Obj Map tool mapped over 200 individual LED panels across the Dragonfly’s spherical ‘eyes’, enabling pixel-perfect alignment on a highly complex curved surface. This combination of tools – normally reserved for big-budget media systems – is now far more accessible thanks to HIVE’s streamlined, user-friendly platform, says the maker.
HIVE: Seamless integration, lasting impact
From day one, HIVE worked closely with Arcadia’s technical production team and long-time partners Cucumber Productions and Video Illusions to align the technology with Arcadia’s creative vision. The system handled both the pre-programmed show and real-time content flawlessly throughout the festival weekend – all powered by renewable energy from Grid Faeries and minimal kit.
Summing up the collaboration, HIVE’s CTO Dave Green comments, “It was a real showcase of what HIVE can do – as a platform, as a product and as a team. I’m proud of the result and grateful to our partners for trusting us with such an ambitious piece. It’s still probably one of my favourite visual installations of all time. It just looks otherworldly – like something from an alien planet.”
Ben Vaughan, Director at Cucumber Productions, adds, “I couldn’t have been happier with how things have gone. As well as making the eyes on the Dragonfly, I was lucky enough to fill the role of Head of Video on the Arcadia stage. This year, I specced HIVE media players and I couldn’t be happier with how things have gone – in no small part thanks to the team there. Huge respect to Mark Calvert, Dave Green and Nigel Sadler for making everything run so smoothly.”
Cyrus Bozorgmehr, Head of Creative Comms at Arcadia, says, “It was great to have a rock-solid media server setup at FOH, running dual 4K NDI feeds with alpha, delivering content smoothly and consistently every night. The lightweight equipment meant it was installed quickly with a minimal footprint, avoiding the usual load-out and truck logistics you’d expect with traditional server stacks.
“The HIVE system ran content seamlessly to our eight double-stacked projectors, keeping everything precisely mapped and aligned in a busy 360-degree environment. It also powered our custom transparent LED video screen – made of over 200 tessellating hexagon panels – which formed the head of the Dragonfly and the DJ booth. Dave Green and Nigel Sadler from HIVE were great to work with, and it was a pleasure to have them on board.”
Looking ahead, HIVE looks forward to collaborating on future editions of the Dragonfly and joining forces again in Glastonbury 2027.