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Germany - Light Converse LTD introduced Lightconverse 3D Show Platform Version 58 at the recent Prolight+Sound trade show in Frankfurt.

The latest release offers a range of new features and improvements that continue to lead the visualization industry, adding to Lightconverse's world-known list of patented features.

The tradeshow also provided the ideal locale for the announcement of winners for this year's Lightconverse and High End Lighting Challenge. Jointly organized with High End Systems, the contest has become an exciting annual event for lighting artists of all stripes to show their stuff.

A small sampling of Version 58 highlights shown at the busy Lightconverse booth includes:

Next-generation Render Engine: Allows for higher quality visualization and a signif

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China - With theme-park experiences growing day by day and new digital tools developing fast, interactivity is transforming lighting designs in modern theme parks. Planet J, located at the Sands Cotai Central in Macau, has put together a number of trendsetting interactive elements and a sophisticated lighting-control system - including ETC Selador Desire luminaires, Source Four LED fixtures, and Unison Mosaic and Paradigm architectural systems - to provide visitors with the world's first live-action role-play theme park.

"The lighting will change as players interact with their surroundings," says Derek Warrick, lighting and systems-design manager from StandardVision, the company that designed and specified the lighting system for the Planet J project. "This means a lot of programming and interaction between computer systems. It also means that the park will look different from

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UK - The grid is full, but there are still plenty of ways to join in the fun and raise much needed funds at the annual Behind The Scenes charity Kartfest.

Taking place on 16 June at Daytona Sandown Park in Esher, Surrey, the Behind the Scenes Kartfest will see a total of 32 teams test their endurance in three hours of non-stop racing, with a prize for the fastest lap, sponsored by Medialease, followed by an exciting - and amusing - F1-style pit stop challenge.

This year, there's extra entertainment for racers and non-racers alike, including coverage of the day's England v Wales EURO 2016 match, live music from up and coming artists, who are donating their time to play after the race as the sun goes down a Mediterranean-style BBQ and a raffle, which features some great prizes.

"We're absolutely delighted that we've sold out so far in advance of the day," says White Ligh

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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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USA - Patti LaBelle recently performed in the historic NYCB Theatre in Westbury with a full Eastern Acoustic Works Redline monitor system. Since 1966, the 3,000-seat theatre-in-the-round has presented many top names in contemporary pop, classic rock, comedy, country, and rhythm and blues.

Ronkonkoma, New York-based Audio Design Group provided eight Redline RL12 loudspeakers used in monitor mode and placed around the lip of the famous turntable stage. Reuben James, LaBelle's monitor engineer since 2010 had specified bi-amped wedges for the downstage mix.

"The EAW Redline RL12 were more than up to the task," he explains. "I was very impressed by the consistent coverage of the spectrum from 98 dB to the 125 dB climax of the show."

The active Redline Series consists of the RL12, RL15 and RL18S subwoofer. The compact RL12 includes a complete on-board 1,250-watt bi-amplified

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USA - Based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, of the USA's founding fathers, Hamilton - An American Musical is enjoying commercial and critical success on Broadway. The show has already earned the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2016 Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, but is also nominated for 16 Tony awards.

Having gained success with an Alcons system on the Steve Martin/Edie Brickell musical Bright Star, sound designer Nevin Steinberg opted to use Alcons again on Hamilton's Broadway run.

Hamilton, with music and lyrics written by Tony-award and Grammy-award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, is unusual in that it extends the musical dynamic range of Broadway. The music ranges from sparse ballads, via R&B and hip-hop, to a fully-fledged rap battle and the whole show is completely 'sung-through' - meaning that the lyrics provide the only plot

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Germany - Full-service event and media production company satis&fy has added to their inventory of Elation Professional lighting gear with a recent purchase of SixBar 1000 and SixBar 500 LED battens. Elation's SixBar Series of color-changing battens feature a six-color LED multi-chip and can be used for a variety of purposes such as general purpose wash/strip lighting, uplighting, cyc wash, accent lighting or as a pixel strip.

"We were looking for a successor to cover a wide range of services, one of them a versatile and homogeneous illumination of any surface and we found it in the SixBar," stated Martin Heuser, global director lighting & rigging services at satis&fy, based in Karben.

"One of its most convincing features is the 12W 6-in-1 LEDs with RGBAW + UV. Another benefit is that it can also be used as an effect light. The whole construction itself, and features such

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Mexico - Hermes Music México, authorised dealer for Wireless Solution in Mexico, has recently completed an architectural lighting project in the Santa Fe district, Mexico City.

Hermes supplied PR Lighting fixtures to light up Paragon Tower, a 151m high hotel, all with LED sources. "The client wanted to enhance the building itself on a permanent basis", explained Ricardo Segura de la Cruz, lighting specialist for Hermes. Controlling the data were WhiteBox F-1 G4S series units, which complemented PR Lighting's capability to use W-DMX.

"As the exclusive distributor for PR Lighting in Mexico we can tie both brands in different projects, and guarantee that our customers get the best of both manufacturers. And by not having to run cables, we saved a lot of the budget in not having to create a new infrastructure just to run data", said Ricardo.

The project used two Whi

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USA - Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington has made a 32-channel Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console the centrepiece of their largest studio.

"The biggest thing was ergonomics", says Peter Randlette, Evergreen's head of electronic media. "You can't sit at the front of some consoles and reach the EQs. And I love the clarity of the [5088's] signal flow, in terms of teaching students fundamental principles of recording and production. It's really straightforward - it doesn't mean it isn't potentially complex, but it 'feels' really good...and the sound has been wonderful."

Their 5088 is outfitted with six Shelford 5052 mic preamp / EQs, eight Shelford 5051 EQ / compressors, eight Portico 5033 EQs, four Portico 5032 mic preamp / EQs, six Portico 5015 mic preamp / compressors, and Rupert Neve Designs' proprietary SwiftMix moving fader automation.

"The quality of the p

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USA / Germany - Against the backdrop of the world's largest broadcast industry trade show, Lawo announced a partnership with the 3IT - Innovation Centre for Immersive Imaging Technologies of the Berlin-based Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (Fraunhofer HHI). The agreement was signed on the Lawo booth at NAB in Las Vegas by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Wiegand, director of the Fraunhofer HHI, and Philipp Lawo, CEO Lawo.

3IT was founded five years ago by the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute to combine the functions of an R&D facility, research laboratory and showroom. In cooperation with selected partners from the economic and scientific worlds, it tests new products and systems and presents them to various target audiences. Its activities focus on technologies including 3D, VR, UHD, HFR and HDR, as well as imaging and video applications in a medical and industrial context. The C

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UK - Lighting and visuals rental specialist Colour Sound Experiment has invested in new Barco 30K projectors which immediately went out on two tours, one being UB40 - featuring Ali Campbell, Astro & Mickey - for which Colour Sound supplied a projection system, LED screens, lighting equipment and crew.

The UB40 tour's show design was a collaboration between Bryan Leitch and Jamie Thompson from creative practice MIRRAD. Jamie was also out on the road operating the lighting alongside Francis Clegg from MIRRAD who co-ordinated and ran the video elements live.

Large format projection is an area that Colour Sound has been considering for some time. The company has already invested steadily over the last five years in LED screen and has its own proprietary BT brand.

MD Haydn Cruickshank (H) commented, "Projection was a logical next step to complement the growing amounts of di

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UK - Yamaha's Commercial Installations Solutions (CIS) range offers installers a wide range of options, making systems from the simplest to the most complex straightforward to design, install, commission and control. Suitable for virtually any indoor project, a recent installation has seen CIS products flex their muscles at Simply Gym.

Welsh not-for-profit company Bay Leisure operates three Simply Gym facilities; in Llansamlet, Gorseinon and Cwmbran. The latter opened in January this year and features a Yamaha CIS audio system, supplied and installed by Swansea-based Total Sound Solutions.

"The client brief was that the system had to deliver a full, even sound throughout the gym, but without having massive, ugly-looking 12" drivers," says Total Sound Solutions chief executive Chris Hooke. "The way the music sounds is vital to the gym experience. The Yamaha VXS8, eight-inch

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UK - Pearce Hire has announced a significant investment in Studio Due floodlight fixtures the WS200/M. The deal with Studio Due, finalised at last week's PLASA Focus Leeds, confirms an initial order as part of a rolling investment by Pearce Hire in LED technology.

Having traditionally specified 400W coloured MBI fittings for outdoor architectural lighting requirements, Pearce Hire has spent considerable time researching the most appropriate LED replacement and has chosen the Studio Due WS200/M which meets the company's 'green' working practice credentials on several levels.

The initial outlay in these products reflects the continuing commitment Pearce Hire has to provide cost effective and sustainable project management for their extensive range of customers with outdoor events.

"The investment in these products is the start of what we anticipate will be an on-going re

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UK - TSL Products, a leading broadcast equipment manufacturer, has become the latest company to join the growing ranks of the RAVENNA partnership community. Based in the UK, TSL Products designs and manufactures a range of hardware and software solutions to facilitate operations within the TV broadcast, cable, satellite, IPTV and IT industries.

TSL Products launched its first RAVENNA-enabled products at NAB 2016. The MPA (Monitor Plus Audio) range of monitoring products is now available in a version with integrated RAVENNA connectivity. Solo offers the ability to listen to any channel, whilst the Mix model enables the user to create a simple monitoring mix.

Matt Colman, product manager, TSL Products, said, "The move to integrating RAVENNA was a logical step in order to remain in sync with the industry's rapid move to AoIP workflows."

ALC NetworX RAVENNA evangelist, And

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Australia - A Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system is helping Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications and media company, to inform and educate visitors at the company's lavish Customer Insight Centre (CIC) in Sydney. Installed in a 300-seat theatre, Constellation provides Telstra with the acoustical flexibility to hold a variety of meetings, concerts, and multimedia presentations in the same space, helping to connect customers with the company's range of cross-platform technology solutions.

"The theatre helps us to engage customers in a way that provides more impact than watching a PowerPoint presentation in a meeting room," explains David Woodbridge, general manager of the CIC. "In conjunction with our 4K LED screen, the immersive soundscapes created by Constellation allow us to adapt the space to best showcase Telstra's capabilities."

The CIC theatre has bee

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USA - As a freelance lighting designer Craig Rutherford, Blueshift Design, enjoys finding new and creative ways to draw both the audience and the musicians on stage into the design experience. In his latest creation, he was asked by the team behind country music icon Alan Jackson to develop a dynamic production design for the Still Keepin' It Country Tour. Wanting to use a full complement of lighting and video, Rutherford turned to Nashville-based Elite Multimedia to provide the touring support that could help him highlight one of country music's most decorated artists.

"This is my second tour with Alan and in this design I really wanted to spread the lighting rig out to most advantageously utilize the complete lighting and video production package," began Rutherford. "We also needed to be cognizant of arranging the physical layout of the rig to best give the show a compelling

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Austria - AV Stumpfl won the award for best family business in UpperAustria at a ceremony organised by the financial newspaper, Wirtschaftsblatt at the Aula der Wissenschaften in Vienna on 17 May 2016. Ironically, the ceremony was presented using none other than AV Stumpfl Monoblox screens!

Austria's AV Stumpfl is "a wholly owned family business that nurtures vibrancy, creativity innovation and brings stability to the local Austrian economy".

"The award is recognition of our growth and success and we're delighted to have won," said Tobias Stumpfl, CEO.

The company was started 40 years ago by innovators Ulli and Reinhold Stumpfl. This modest beginning created an idea that emerged from the ground up. Today it is managed by next generation leadership, Tobias Stumpfl, CEO and Fabian Stumpfl, project management sales and HR.

(Jim Evans)

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Switzerland - The complete Muse stage for the Drones tour date was supported by a giant ground support system, since the roofing of the Hallenstation in Zurich did not have sufficient loading capacity.

For every problem there is a solution and in this case the solution was offered by Malecon Ltd. Known for their expertise in heavy lifting and for their large stock of extraordinary strong truss, they were called in for help.

The stage setup is an 'in-the-round' setup, with a circular stage in the middle, with catwalks on either end of the stage. Above that are the space station and decking that accommodate the drones and technical staff. There are also retractable video screens using projection, a spherical 360 screen over the main central stage.

The complete Muse stage had to be supported by a giant ground support system, since the roofing of the Hallenstation did not

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South Africa - Callum Sutherland, a student from St Stithians Boys College, Johannesburg, was 13-years-old when he joined the school's technical crew and soon thereafter, sat alone behind a Martin LightJockey with a little more than 15 minutes to programme a couple of cues for his very first event, a talent show. Skip a few years and he recently purchased six Robe Robin 300 LEDWash fixtures from DWR Distribution, which he used as part of the rig when lighting Brescia House School's matric dance in May.

With the theme, A night under the stars, Callum used six Robin 300 LEDWash units, three Robin 300 Spot Classic, Chauvet fixtures and Martin M-PC lighting software to create a moonlit ambience for the memorable evening. "I used the spots with a prism to create stars and the Robin 300LED Wash units to wash the room evenly. A hazer created a misty fill in the room, and parca

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UK - Last week saw the Theatre 2016 Conference take place in Central London. Bringing together over 1,000 delegates from across all areas of UK theatre, it was the largest event of its kind and the first time since 2005 that the sector has come together for a major industry-wide conference. With its reputation as the leading lighting supplier to both West End and UK theatre, White Light (WL) was asked to provide the production support. Yet rather than supply the lighting equipment, the company was approached to provide the entire AV support.

Theatre 2016 took place from 12-13 May and was held across three West End venues: The Piccadilly, Lyric and Arts Theatres. The programme looked at new challenges facing the industry and what organisations needed to do to ensure future success. Bryan Raven, WL's managing director, comments, "This is the first time that a theatre conference

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UK - The CPL team (Central Presentations Ltd) led by Lee Gruszeckyj delivered stage design and full technical production for the 2016 annual conference for accounting specialists, Tax Assist, staged in the Caernarfon Suite at Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, South Wales.

CPL has provided sound, lighting and video for the event for the last few years, and seen it grow in size and a commitment to production values. The most successful elements of last years' event - also the company's 20th anniversary - were taken as the starting point for this year's stage and set design - and combined with some new components to keep it looking fresh and interesting for the 400 guests.

"Flexibility was the key," states Lee, together with being able to set up quickly and efficiently. A hybrid approach to the design ensured a slick transition from conference session in the afternoon to full-o

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Italy - Among the numerous large rallies staged throughout Italy for and against the proposed law regarding same-sex civil unions and adoptions by same-sex couples, one of those that attracted the widest media coverage was the Family Day staged in January at Rome's Circus Maximus.

Dating back to 7 B.C., the venue is in fact the second largest sports stadium of all time and, where chariot races, simulated battles with infantry, cavalry and elephants once drew an enormous number of spectators in ancient Rome, the 680 yards long Circus attracted a huge crowd, not only there to show its support, but also hear exactly what the key speakers had to say.

The big challenge of ensuring perfect intelligibility for the delicate topics covered was accepted by audio contractor Cipiesse from Rezzato (near Brescia). The audio team comprised Cipiesse partner and production manager Marco Ri

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