Obsession / Obsession II (1992)
Electronic Theatre Controls / ETC

Obsession

Obsession came from ETC’s desire to serve the Broadway lighting market, which then used the Strand Light Palette range, originally designed by David Cunningham in the mid 1970s to mimic the tracking philosophy of the manual piano boards. Product manager Anne Valentino and programmer John Ide in many respect created a product that worked just like Palette, but better - more quickly, more reliably and with a number of new functions.

Part of ETC’s big launch at LDI 1992, it rapidly won Broadway LDs over.

However, it was appeared just too early to worry about moving lights. As every show started embracing them ETC re-visited Obsession in 1997, Fred Foster leading his company to create perhaps the most distinctive lighting control surface, Obsession 2, with its hand-ground metal finish and hugely satisfying ‘go’ button. Sadly the software demonstrated that you couldn’t really just bolt moving light functionality on top of an existing conventional lighting desk. ETC started from scratch to create Eos – but the family lineage, from the keyboard layout to the syntax – is so strong that it’s entirely possible for Eos users to sit down and run this Obsession!