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UK - It’s hard to imagine how the 40th incarnation of the PLASA show could have gone any better for Elation Professional. Capping an exceptional show, the company’s new full-featured Artiste Dali LED moving head and IP-rated Proteus Hybrid discharge-lamp moving head were both recognized as exceptional innovation with a PLASA Award for Innovation.
On hand to accept the awards were Elation president Toby Velazquez and Elation sales director Eric Loader. “This PLASA will always be special,” Eric Loader said shortly after the ceremony. “We’re humbled and honoured to have won two PLASA awards for product innovation. We continue to listen to designers and rental houses about their needs and continue to break the glass ceiling of perception that quality must be expensive

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UK - Martin Audio has announced a significant upgrade to its optimisation, control and monitoring software platforms. Display 2.3 integrates the recently announced Wavefront Precision series featuring scalable optimisation, while Vu-Net 2.1 integrates control and monitoring for the new iKON amplifiers, Wavefront Precision Series and XE stage monitors.
For the first time, Display will be available to anyone that registers for the software. Dom Harter, managing director, explains: “MLA users for years have told us that it does things that no other competitor product can do and that we should make this easier for the industry to recognise. Part of this understanding is making Display 2.3 more readily available for the industry to familiarise itself with and to demystify the process. The launch of Wavefront Precision - which has seen unprecedented demand - also precipitated th

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Europe - The EVID-S series is the latest member of the EVID (EV Innovative Design) family of commercial loudspeakers for installed applications. Every aspect of the EVID-S series has been designed from the ground up to ensure efficient installation for the contractor and excellent results for the end-user, says the company. The series includes 4-inch, 5.25-inch and 8-inch 2-way models with matching dual-10-inch and single 12-inch subwoofers, making it easy to select a suitable model a specific space – a new go-to solution for distributed sound systems.
All EVID-S models offer Electro-Voice-engineered components for superior sound quality, low-profile looks and robust reliability for a wide range of indoor and outdoor applications. These include retail environments, hospitality settings such as bars, lounges, patios, pool areas and restaurants; conference and meeting rooms
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

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UK - This month’s London Design Festival 2017 sees the global launch of Tord Boontje’s new collection of chandelier and crystal lighting components, designed exclusively for Swarovski Crystal Palace in his 15th year of collaboration with Swarovski. The installation includes a highly innovative soundscape which was created in collaboration with sound artist Manabu Shimada and is presented via a surround sound system provided by Yamaha.
Yamaha audio equipment is bringing the unique interactive sound design to life. Visitors and people around the globe can tweet to alter the composition of the music by using one of the following hashtags on Twitter to change the soundscape: #crystal #light #reflection #water #swarovskicrystalpalace #tordboontje
The installation is accompanied by a quadrophonic, surround soundscape, delivered by four Yamaha VXS3F loudspeakers and a VX

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UK - Canadian pop megastar Justin Bieber’s Purpose world tour made just two stops in the UK during 2017, one of which was a sold-out show at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium in June which drew ‘Beliebers’ from throughout the UK and Europe.
London-based Capital Sound Hire were the audio contractors for the event and supplied a bespoke system design using Outline’s flagship GTO family of products designed by Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Perreux, who already had the Cardiff stadium stored in his OpenArray acoustic measurement files. Capital had of course worked frequently at the stadium before with major pop acts including Take That, and a last-minute decision to close the roof did not necessitate major changes to the basic system design.
The main and side hangs comprised 15 of the 2x15-inch GTO elements with one GTO-DF down-fill at the bottom of each hang, in add

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USA - Country music fans got a glimpse of the future on a warm August Georgia night at the Lady Antebellum Pavilion. There on stage, performing solos and as a group, were six budding talents visiting from Nashville. Having written hits for some of country’s biggest names like Luke Byran and Florida Georgia Line, the sextet was there to chase the dream, as performers. Supporting them with some colourful, evocative star-worthy looks was a John Berret designed lightshow that utilized 35 Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Quest Sound & Productions.
“People familiar with country music know that quite a few stars got their starts writing music for established artists,” said Berret. “The musical talent on stage was pretty awesome. My goal was to give them a look that reflected their talent as well as their potential. I wanted to evoke the stardom yet to come.”<

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Germany - Ahead of the Sturmfahrt tour to promote their new album, hardcore fans of Eisbnrecher (Icebreaker) flocked to their own festival under the name Volle Kraft Voraus ‘Full Force Ahead). Billed as Eisbrecher and Friends, the band invited artists like Lord of the Lost, Combichrist and And She Came into the Ratiopharm Arena in Neu-Ulm to join them for the occasion.
Rain Age was technical service provider for the high-profile event, while LD Martin Heining is also one of the long-time associates of Eisbrecher. "I've been supporting them for a long time and am responsible for the set and lighting design as well as for the special effects at the shows,” he reports. “It was only logical to work together with them on this festival as well.” In fact, it is becoming almost a full-time job for Heining, because the upcoming Sturmfahrt tour and his commitment to VNV Nation

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UK - Philips Lighting has announced that its support of London's Arcola Theatre in staging the popular Grimeborn opera festival helped the venue with its ambition to become carbon neutral. At the same time, the lighting rig also providing lighting designers with a dynamic, beautiful and consistent quality of light.
Arcola Theatre aims to become the world's first carbon neutral theatre, so being able to use low-energy, high-quality LED stage lighting fixtures from Philips Entertainment Lighting contributed a significant advantage to the production of Grimeborn. Arcola estimates that the inclusion of Philips Lighting's LED technology in the Grimeborn lighting rig delivered a 36% power-saving.
Philips Selecon PLprofiles and Philips SL BAR wash lights augmented Arcola's existing lighting equipment. "This dramatically reduced our power consumption," say

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UAE - You can't miss the latest attraction at The Dubai Mall: the new curved video wall above the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo measures a stunning 700sq.m with 1.7 billion pixels on 820 OLED displays. Behind the scenes, you'll find Dataton's award-winning Watchout multi-display production and playback system, Watchnet manager software and Watchpax 4 servers delivering high-resolution content for the mall's estimated 80 million visitors.
The new video wall at The Dubai Mall, unveiled by Emaar Entertainment in August 2017, takes digital signage into a whole new realm and has already earned a hat-trick of records, in partnership with LG: largest OLED screen, highest resolution video wall and largest high-definition video wall.
Dataton’s Watchout multi-display system and compact Watchpax4 media servers handle content production and delivery, while LG’s flexible

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Poland - Clarity and transparency were the key reasons why sound engineer Tomasz Klimkiewicz chose DPA microphones when he was recently tasked with amplifying a series of concerts featuring traditional Polish Lenten cantos.
“I didn’t want the true sound of the instruments to change in any way,” Klimkiewicz says. “For example, the drums had been tuned by the drummer and I wanted the microphones to capture that exact sound. I chose DPA because I knew that their microphones were capable of delivering the clarity I was looking for.”
Entitled For Every Soul, the concerts featured unconventional arrangements of Lenten cantos that, while not as well-known as Christmas carols, are equally rich in beautiful and poignant melodies.
With a project of such emotional intensity, Klimkiewicz was keen to keep the aesthetics as clean as possible by not allowing t

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South Africa - To cater for theatre productions Priscilla Queen of the Desert (South Africa & Hong Kong Season), The Sound of Music (Asian tour 2017/18) and Evita (South African & Asian tour 2017/18), South African based Gearhouse Splitbeam, a theatre equipment rental company, has invested in 90 additional Prolyft motors and six controllers supplied by DWR Distribution. Alistair Kilbee is the managing director of Splitbeam and writes on his experience with the brand and why he went this route.
“I have always liked the Prolyft brand and this purchase made sense as we already had a stock holding of 57 Prolyft motors (1 Ton & ¼ Ton). The new acquisition, consisting of 85 Prolyte Prolyft Aetos 1 Ton and five Prolyte Prolyft Aetos 2 Ton, all in cases, along with six Aetos Pro range low voltage 8-way control, fits in nicely with our current stoc

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UK - SLX has announced the launch of its new student bursary scheme. The scheme is aimed at second and third year lighting design, technical and event management students across England and Wales, providing five successful candidates with equipment, support and opportunities throughout the academic year.
SLX has supported and sponsored students in many ways through its history, employing student casuals, offering sponsorships and apprenticeships across the business.
Jo Sunners, business development manager at SLX describes the inspiration behind the scheme: “We’ve decided after a few months of consulting with drama schools and industry professionals to launch a new way of supporting the next generation of talent in our industry, something myself and SLX are extremely passionate about. I’m really excited to work with and support the successful applicants in the

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UAE - Dubai Opera, located in what is claimed to be 'the most prestigious square kilometre in the world' in Downtown Dubai, has recently purchased 37 x Claypaky A.leda B-EYE K10s as part of a technical upgrade to the event space's lighting rigs.
Dubai Opera is considered a masterpiece of contemporary architecture. The 'dhow-shaped' building, designed by architect Janus Rostock, houses a flexible, 1900-seat venue which can be transformed into a theatre, concert hall or 'flat-floor' event space.
"Dubai Opera is a first-rate venue and we present and produce top-quality performances," explains Geoffrey Wheel, technical director of Dubai Opera. "Our audiences expect a high standard, and as such we always strive to be the best. We therefore invest in the very best equipment and this is demonstrated in our stake in the Claypaky brand. Its products are of an excellent quality."

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UK - Wayne Howell, founder of Artistic Licence and the inventor of the Art-Net ethernet lighting protocol, has been honoured with the 2017 Gottelier award at the PLASA London show.
Named in memory of Tony Gottelier, the renowned industry innovator and commentator, this annual award recognises product developers who have made significant long-term contributions to the advancement of entertainment, presentation or installation technology.
Wayne Howell founded Artistic Licence in 1988. He was a major contributor to the development of DMX512-A in the 1990s, and released his free, public domain Art-Net protocol a few years later. Art-Net is now in its fourth version and has been adopted by hundreds of manufacturers worldwide.
Wayne has continued to expand and diversify the Artistic Licence brand, and is well known for his books, articles and seminars.
Artistic

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Europe - Depeche Mode’s Global Spirit Tour sees the band crossing the globe in support of Spirit, their 14th studio album. During the European leg alone, the boys will play to 1.5m fans in 32 cities in 21 countries. And at each venue a pair of Hippotizer Boreal Media Servers will provide the technology required to manage the show’s video playback.
SRae Productions, the full-service design and production company owned by Sooner Routhier and Robert Long, takes charge of the tour lighting direction for Anton Corbijn’s production design. Commenting on the Global Spirit Tour, Sooner described some of the duties she and her team demand of the Hippotizer gear: “For Depeche Mode, the Hippotizer is a playback machine. We used the system for IMAG effects on the rear wall. We also used the colour block system in some way, shape or form. We trace the screens to give them

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South Africa - Visiting South Africa, and in fact the African continent for the very first time, Oliver Ronshausen, service manager from MA Lighting, presented an elaborate three-day Advanced Service Training session to the DWR Distribution technical and support team.
Oliver joined MA in 1994, and with only a four-year interruption in between, really is part of the family. “I love the MA team, the product, being around the users and distributors and making friends in the industry,” said Oliver who in August last year started pushing service training to new and more structured level. “The training is to educate and enable people in the field to do repairs but the important thing, really, is maintenance. The feeling I have is that many MA owners don’t realize that they have to maintain their consoles in order to operate shows with a reliable product.”
The comp

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UK - Sundown Festival returned to Norfolk Showground for the seventh year this September and Hawthorn once again supplied lighting for the main stage. Attracting a 40,000 crowd, the three-day festival was the biggest ever and featured Craig David, Pendulum, Rag’n’Bone Man and You Me At Six.
Hawthorn supplied the Main Stage flown lighting system, including rigging, drapes, FOH control systems and followspots. On top of this, the company also provided a custom designed lighting package for Saturday’s headline act Craig David and another for Pendulum, who brought the festival to a spectacular close on the Sunday night.
Hawthorn’s head of concert touring, Mick Freer, led the project and consulted with the lighting designers for this year’s headline and supporting acts to produce a design that brought together all their precise requirements.
“The LDs provi

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USA - “Magic is what we do, Music is how we do it,” Jerry Garcia once told an interviewer. Had the Grateful Dead frontman been around to see the fantastical transformation of his namesake forest at the recent Lockin’ Festival, he undoubtedly would have agreed that there can be quite a bit of magic involved in lighting too.
S. Jeremy Peters turned the thickly wooded ‘Garcia’s Forest’ around Lockin’s Terrapin Station Stage (named after the Grateful Dead’s mystical 1977 album) into a transcendental canopy of colour with 150 pixel-mapped IP65 par fixtures that he controlled with his ChamSys PC Wing and Playback Wing.
Peters, the owner of SJP Productions, hung between three and five lights on over 30 trees in the forest. The glow from these fixtures radiated throughout the woods, colorizing other trees and creating a wonderland around the stage. Using modifi

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Tahiti - Nexo’s flagship modular line array, the STM Series, has been installed in its most exotic location to date – the To’Ata Showground in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti.
This very large showground, available for rental in different configurations that can accommodate 3200-6000 people, is the primary cultural events venue in French Polynesia, staging rock and pop concerts for up to 5000 people. It is also home to the Heiva, a spectacular two-month festival of dance and sport which dates back to 1881. Teams and troupes arrive from all the islands, more than 8000 participants in all, with the best chant and dance groups competing on the famous To’Ata stage.
Te Fare Tahiti Nui (TFTN), the public service organisation which manages the venue, was tasked with choosing a PA system that could match the showground’s versatility. Working closely with Comimpex, the

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Norway - Acoustic problems are not limited to historic venues - many newer concert halls still experience issues with reverb or frequencies that can be difficult to eliminate. But an Alcons Audio pro-ribbon system has made a major difference to the main live venue in Tromsø, Norway.
Owned by the municipality of Tromsø, KulturHuset opened in 1984 and is used for a wide range of productions including opera, theatre, stand-up comedy, rock, pop and classical concerts. It also shows films during the Tromsø International Film Festival. The main auditorium can accommodate a seated audience of 620, or 1200 with the seats removed.
The main auditorium’s existing PA had been in place for over 10 years and the theatre felt that it was time to modernise and embrace the latest technology to help minimise a problem with bass reverberation.
"Sound quality was of course on

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UK - On its first ever public outing at PLASA 2017, Le Mark’s new PAL Label Challenge was attempted by some of the shows strongest visitors and exhibitors, but remained completely undefeated.
“The PAL Label Challenge is so much fun. It gets really competitive between friends and colleagues but so far, no one has made it budge.” Said Le Mark’s marketing & strategy manager, Mark Gibbons.
What’s the PAL Label Challenge? Le Mark wanted an entertaining way to demonstrate the raw strength of the adhesive they use in selected PAL Road Case Labels. With the help of with 5 Star Cases, they designed a set of flight case plates, fitted with heavy duty handles and stuck them together using the very same super-strength foam adhesive used in their foam-backed PAL Labels. The challenge is to see if anyone has the strength to pull them apart.
With no one successful
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