Naostage’s K SYSTEM performer tracking platform was deployed across nine French festivals during the summer 2026 season, including Art Rock, 3iS Fest, Festival de Poupet, Main Square Festival, Les Vieilles Charrues and Les Plages Électroniques. The beaconless system is designed to eliminate the recalibration and tagging typically required between acts, collapsing a conventional followspot workflow – which would require five operators for five artists across a festival day – down to a single operator working with automated tracking.
At Art Rock in Saint-Brieuc, a single stage hosted 15 separate productions across three days, each with its own artist and lighting designer, with up to 10 followspots running simultaneously. A single KAPTA sensor and one KAM camera covered the deployment alongside technical partner Art.light, installed once before the festival opened, with every visiting lighting designer connecting to the tracking data without recalibration between acts.
At 3iS Fest, staged at the Institut international de l’image et du son, the deployment mounted one stage-facing KAPTA and two KAM cameras on a centre truss at a height of 9m, covering a 15m by 9m tracking area and combining 2D and 3D tracking with PSN and KratOSC integration. With only minutes between acts, the team created new 3D tracking zones in Naostage’s KRATOS software shortly before each performance rather than rebuilding the setup.
The signal path uses KAPTA sensors and KAM cameras to capture movement, a KORE server to process position data in real time, and KRATOS to distribute it as tracking data to existing production systems, most commonly a lighting console driving moving heads as automated followspots, though the same output can feed audio systems, media servers, stage automation or third-party systems over open protocols. KAPTA embeds five cameras – one visible, two near-infrared and two thermal – with a single unit installed at 10m covering an area up to 20m wide by 15m deep. K SYSTEM installs in 20 to 30 minutes, tracks up to 64 targets and ships in two flight cases deployable by a single technician.
Olivier Le Doeuff, tracking operator at Art Rock, said: “At a festival, you never get to touch the artist. Beaconless is the only way to follow guest headliners, act after act, with zero prep and zero turnaround.”
Joshua Kieffer, tracking operator at 3iS Fest, added: “The main issue is time, and equipping the performers during the changeover.”
Look out for the in-depth interview with Naostage CEO and founder Paul Cales in the next edition of Installation out on October 23.
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