On 19 October at a press conference held during the LDI show in Las Vegas, Martin Professional’s US subsidiary, Martin Professional Inc, presented its second annual Intelligent Lighting Technology Grant.

The company’s CEO, Troels Volver, presented the 2002 Grant to the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) Department of Theatre. On hand to accept the award on behalf of the university was Brackley Frayer, lighting designer and head of design/technology at UNLV. "The Grant will allow UNLV to teach students with state-of-the-art equipment and help to establish an Entertainment Engineering programme," he stated after the presentation. "Las Vegas is the centre for entertainment technology, thus we need our students involved in all aspects of lighting."

Forme

Millbank Electronics has launched a new range of CM8 ceiling loudspeakers. The 8W 100V ceiling loudspeaker has a full power output of 103dB at one metre and a wide frequency response, which makes it ideal for PA/VA installations in shopping centres, offices and airports. Both standard and BS5839 pt.8 versions are fitted with three different mounting modes.

(Ruth Rossington)

Tomcat’s second annual Las Vegas Motor School, held immediately after LDI 2002, was a major success for the company. Building on the popularity of the first class offered in Las Vegas in June 2001, the company enrolled over 40 participants for the two-day course. These received instruction on chain hoist motors by Don Dimitroff of Columbus McKinnon, fall protection lead by Morgan Neff of Mine Safety Appliances and truss theory taught by Keith Bohn from Tomcat USA. In other Tomcat training news, the annual four-day Tomcat Hoist and Rigging Workshop will be hosted by Tomcat USA in Midland, Texas on February 5-8, 2003.

(Ruth Rossington)

featured content

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

Employers invariably have fluctuating levels of demand for work or may, on occasion, have a rush job or a deadline to meet which can only be achieved if workers are prepared to put in some overtime. Can the employer insist upon this?

As the result of a case heard earlier this year by the European Court of Justice, the answer is ‘no’ unless there is a provision in the employment contract giving the employer the right to insist that overtime is worked. The employee had been dismissed for refusing to work overtime and the Court held that he was quite entitled to refuse as his contract said nothing on this issue. Accordingly, contracts should contain an appropriate requirement and always be checked before any attempt to insist upon overtime being worked is made.

Eric Hanson has joined PRG as the director of business development, based in Chicago. Jere Harris, chairman and CEO of the Group, has welcomed the appointment: "Eric brings to PRG a wealth of experience serving trade show and corporate event clients. PRG currently serves a lot of trade show clients in that market, but we believe we have many additional opportunities for growth there. Eric will be leading our growth efforts." Hanson was formerly with Vari-Lite Production Services where he was a national sales manager responsible for trade show and corporate event clients.

(Ruth Rossington)

Lighting companies trading on the Internet are being warned to keep a watchful eye after a number of businesses in the industry have seen their Internet traffic unlawfully directed to a rival’s website.

The warning comes from commercial law firm, Taylors, who successfully helped a leading Lancashire-based lighting manufacturer win a legal battle against their competitor who had unlawfully placed meta tags on their website so that customers searching for their rival’s products would be directed instead to their own. Further investigations by intellectual property lawyers at Taylors also revealed that the website contained 15 meta tags for other rivals’ sites.

Elaine Hurn, managing partner at Taylors said: "Some unscrupulous companies have been including meta tags giving the names of their competitors so that when the competitor's name is searched for, their own

Soundcraft’s successful new multipurpose MH4 mixing desk is continuing to make an impact with the UK’s sound rental companies. Liverpool-based Adlib Audio is the latest rental company to purchase both 40- and 48-channel frame versions of the new console.

Fitted with four stereo mic/line inputs, the MH4 serves as either a dedicated front-of-house or monitor desk - or a combination of both - attributes which Adlib managing director Andy Dockerty had been seeking. The 48-channel desk went straight out with up-and-coming Liverpool band, The Coral, where colleague and sound engineer Dave Kay, was mixing at front-of-house. Andy Dockerty explained: "We are finding that in our marketplace - typically the 1,000-2,000 capacity venues - we need a reasonably high-spec desk in a relatively small footprint, which the engineers will be happy with. I liked Soundcraft’s Series 4,

The Flightcase Warehouse and Q-Flightcases of Lisburn have formed a partnership to distribute their standard range of flightcases in Ireland. The new company will be called Flightcase Warehouse Ireland and will be based in Lisburn. Flightcase Warehouse managing director Steve Austin comments: "We know that the potential in Ireland is massive, but due to logistics and shipping costs, we are limited to what we can sell direct from the UK. According to our website statistics, we receive on average of 5000 hits per month from Ireland, indicating a need for an outlet in this region. Q-Flightcases are the perfect solution to this problem, and are well situated to cover the whole of Ireland."

Q-Flightcases co-director Joan Beggs adds: "At present those companies that take advantage of our local facilities, have mostly been interested in our specialized cases. Generally, for lar

Sound Advice, the Music Industry Education Roadshow, kicked off its tour of the UK on Monday 21 October to a packed auditorium of eager young music students at The Brit School, the venue for the launch event.

The day, which began at 11am, was split into three seminars Can't Get You Out Of My Head - from the Song to the Recording; Help I Need Somebody - from the Concept to the Concert; Paid in Full - from Rights to Royalties. Panellists for the London seminars were Horace Trubridge, Andy East, Sharon Rose, Radio 1 star Steve Lamacq, and Blue Weaver for the creative panel; Howard Ricklow, Nick Kanaar, Martin Talbot, Peter Horrey, Jane Dyball and ex Dire Straits manager Ed Bicknell for the business seminar and Frances Lowe, Peter Horrey, Mark Jones, Jo Laverty, Malcolm Buckland and Jill Drew on the rights and royalties panel. Over 200 students joined industry professionals for the day of

Dave Rice has been appointed president of Cerwin Vega and KRK Systems. The appointment follows the Stanton Group’s successful bid for Cerwin Vega last month, and Mr. Rice will report directly to Gerard Cohen, president and CEO of the Stanton Group.

Immediate priorities will be to review the current business operations, establish the overall direction of the organizations and implement business programs and procedures to obtain maximum profits. Rice commented: "Cerwin Vega has been a household name for many years, synonymous with value and bass. It has broad brand recognition in just about every speaker category - mobile/car, hi-fi, multi-media and pro - but has limited market share. This is because during the last few years the company has not reverse engineered products that consumers were asking for, nor at the prices they were willing to pay."

He is confident that

After many years with Trantec, Tim Riley has left to form his own company - Richmond Unicorn Ltd - with the aim of marketing and selling what he describes as "the value for money option in many market areas".

Riley has his venture with Smartwireless. "After so many years in the radio mic business, it's clear that there is a large chunk of the market that is never likely to be as brand aware as the large radio mic companies would have us believe." he says. "Certainly there are end users the world over that will settle for nothing less than the market leader but I'm hoping to exploit the vast section of pro audio consumers, schools and colleges, churches, pubs, clubs, karaoke, DJ, aerobics and countless others that will rarely if ever be influenced by the hundreds of thousands of pounds of marketing money spent on them." He continues: "These people neit

Proving that no job is too unusual, a Lighthouse LVP1010 LED video screen (10mm pixel pitch, 1000 nits of brightness) was supplied for a large pharmaceutical company, Pharmacia’s, recent staff forum. The 5x5 panel screen was supplied by AV Network, specialists in the hire and sale of technology presentation products. “The management of Pharmacia believe in strong, regular communications with its staff," explains AV Network director, Suzanne Atkins. "And to achieve this they hold regular staff forums for two-way open communications and updates." To keep the meeting informal, and to encourage interaction from the staff, the company wanted to keep the event in-house.

"Their offices have a large glass-ceilinged atrium, which they wanted to use for the forum," continues Atkins. "This gave us an area with very high ambient light. As we intended to ru

Professional audio distributor, Rock Centrum, has completed a major indoor and outdoor installation in the Slovakian city of Martin. The company was approached by the city's mayor and a panel of architects to create a fitting audio system for a high profile new pedestrian area and the glass-sided ‘Millenium’ building within it. The open air space is dominated by 10 translucent columns, which project a light and sound show into the central square. An Allen & Heath GR1 three-output analogue zone mixer routes audio to the columns, which contain five Crown XLS series amplifiers and 10 Tannoy i8 AW all weather speakers. Delays are provided by a Digitech Studio Quad4 multi-effects processor.

Beyond the columns, the pedestrian area is overlooked by the suitably impressive Millenium bar. The building is divided into four independent zones, each fed by an output from an Allen & Heat

Rising dance stars Kosheen have gone from touring pubs and clubs in a Transit van to playing the main stage at V2002 in just 18 months. This month, they embark on their first ever production tour with a Martin Audio, XTA, Midas and Sennheiser system supplied by Capital Sound. The nine-date UK tour runs from October 10-25 with the final night at Brixton Academy.

Capital Sound’s Paul Timmins explains: "We supported them and provided monitors on a 12-week tour last year when they were on their way up, and they’ve come a very long way very quickly. A year and a half ago were still going around in a van and now they’re taking out a full production including sound, lighting and projection."

This autumn’s one-truck tour production features a Midas Heritage 3000 for FOH with engineer Simon Thomas and a Midas XL4 on monitors, mixed by Dave Lee. 14 cabinets as

Now fewer than 300 Arrisun Event 575 Daylight Pars were on duty at the British International Motor Show - all hired by north-east London-based Static Light. Some 200 of these were featured on the spectacular Vauxhall stand - mounted on 50 x 50 GP truss to create a dramatic effect in front of a Dataton Watchout soft-blend backdrop.

The ballasts - power factor corrected, dimmable, and controllable via DMX - were stacked in groups of three in specially made 19" racks. Andrew Mama, a director of Static Light, said that Marshall Design, who designed the Vauxhall display, had insisted on using Arri. "These are ideal for motor shows because of their fast set-up, advanced optics and the fact they have a dichroic glass reflector behind the light. This produces an even field of light - rather than the polished aluminium which degrades quickly."

He says that unlike other luminar

One of the largest concentrations of its kind in the world, a record-breaking number of 26 BSS Jellyfish has been ordered for installation in the leafy backwater of Bagshot in Surrey. Installation Technologies, the Oxfordshire-based audio-visual installation company, is masterminding the ultimate personal entertainment network for guests at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, part of the Exclusive Hotels group.

Winner of the AA's prestigious Hotel of the Year 2002 award, Pennyhill Park is currently constructing a lavishly appointed spa and health centre. Adam Bloch of Installation Technologies has designed an entertainment system which delivers multi-channel choice to every fitness room and treatment suite, giving guests the ability to pick their own music, ambience and volume preferences using the Jellyfish interface.

The heart of the network is two BSS Soundweb 9088ii DSP engines, with four

Denon has unveiled the latest addition to its range of CD players - the DNS5000. Among its many features are a Motor-Drive Active Platter offering scratch and search with the feel of an analogue turntable, 2 in 1 alpha track, hot starts, hot disc, mirror mix, user-replaceable drives and three-way scratch.

The most significant feature of the S-5000 is that the platter spins - the machine is a true CD turntable. To emulate a record deck as closely as possible, the turntable has a vinyl disc on with grooves cut into it, replicating the feel of a conventional record! The S-5000 offers the ability to manipulate the vinyl disc in the required stylistic manner, plus the added bonus of no stylus - and no jumping! The Forward/Back function is perfect for ‘cutting in’ samples without having to close the mixer fader - like having an extra hand! The platter can be assigned to scratch e

A year after the devastating events of 11 September, 2001, light is gleaming again in the Winter Garden, the centrepiece public space of the World Financial Center complex. The vaulted glass atrium was severely damaged during the collapse of the towers, and the lighting system, including speciality entertainment luminaires and architectural-control functionality, was destroyed. Miraculously, people were evacuated in time to prevent injuries. As part of the $50m renovation, a new glass façade archway has replaced the footbridge which led to the World Trade Center. High within the arches of the new glass ceiling is a state-of-the-art lighting rig and ETC control system.

Todd Berling Design Inc was asked in November 2001 by Brookfield Properties to assess the damage to the venue's theatrical systems - rigging, lighting and audio. "Our original walkthrough was overwhelming. We got to

Following our news story last week on the death of Derek Power, we now understand that his funeral will take place at midday this coming Friday at St Mary's Church, Callington, Cornwall. Flowers have specifically not been requested in favour of a collection at the service for the benefit of the church itself.

500 guests attended this year’s UK AV Industry Awards Ceremony on 16 October; and the event attracted record numbers of entries. One of the most hotly contested categories was Installation of the Year, which included five finalists instead of the usual three. Electrosonic, which was involved in three of the final projects, emerged as the overall winner of Installation of the Year for ‘Thinktank’, the Birmingham Museum of Science and Discovery. The other finalists were Williams F1 Conference Center and Grand Prix Museum; the Vanco Lab Presentation Environment; the Sheraton Frankfurt 270 degree AV installation; and The Big Picture at Imperial War Museum North.

The principal criteria applied to the judging process were evidence of innovation and company performance, coherent strategies and objectives, capable implementation, the appropriate use of technologies and creati

i-vision has launched the I-Vex Flagstaff - an illuminated flagpole which embraces a broad spectrum of applications including the architectural, retail, corporate branding and events markets. The I-Vex is currently available in three different versions: as a wall-mounted pole, as a standard upright flagpole or as a mobile upright flagpole.

Variations in height can be achieved, but currently, the three standard lengths for the wall versions are 1.3, 2.3 and 3 metres. The uprights are available in three standard sizes - 4, 6 and 9 metres - and the mobiles come in 4 and 6 metre heights. The wall mounting poles are available in fixed, user-definable colours, which can be matched to any standard Lee or Rosco gel colour. The uprights are also available as fixed colours.

All three versions are available with CYM colour-changing mechanisms, complete with onboard programmer. The latter offers

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