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UK- Architectural and feature lighting specialist i-Vision has launched the first in its MYLED - Moving Yoke LED - range of products, the MYLED T36.

i-Vision’s R&D team initially developed the product for specific architectural and retail projects, but have since decided to go into full production. The MYLED T36 is an RGB moving yoke LED fixture, which simulates a conventional 250 sized wash or fresnel fitting, but is, according to the company, substantially brighter, lighter and less power-hungry. It’s ideal for all types of installation applications in clubs, bars, restaurants and theatres, as well as for live music venues and touring.

The T36 lightsource consists of 36 high-brightness Luxeon LEDs, and the unit comes with full dimming and colour mix control, and fo

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UK - Keith Watson has been appointed to the new position of marketing director for the Soundcraft Group, worldwide. The appointment, confirmed by new Group managing director Andy Trott, is designed to increase the momentum of the Soundcraft, BSS Audio and AMEK brands.

As the company embarks on a vigorous programme of product development, Watson’s primary aim will be to raise brand profile and manage an expedient design-to-market delivery, as well as establish a number of new customer facing initiatives.

Originally a student of engineering and now, with over 20 years experience across a full range of marketing and communications programmes, Watson brings an impressive pedigree to The Soundcraft Group. Since the mid-eighties he has held senior positions responsible for every aspect of marketing, spanning advanced technology, B2B and consumer brands. He also includes band a

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UK - Old Trafford’s ‘Theatre of Dreams’ saw as much action off the pitch as on during last month’s UEFA Champions League Final between Juventus and AC Milan. Outside the stands, the home of Manchester United was turned into a giant hospitality village as the major sponsor partners - Sony Computer Entertainment, MasterCard and Amstel - laid on lavish entertainment inside, while fourth sponsor, Ford, turned their nearby showroom into a huge party zone.

Contracted by production company, Denham Technical Services, to provide a complete relay distribution - not only in the giant tented area, but also within some of the permanent function rooms - CT Screenco were in constant action. Their inventory - mostly supplied by CT-NEC - enabled corporate hospitality guests to have a permanent visual reference to the live action and looped highlights of the previous roun

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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 - Forge Europa, the LED displays and lighting specialist, has recently expanded its Test and Measurement capability by commissioning a bespoke dark room complete with precision optical bench and a variety of supporting optoelectronic measuring equipment.

The darkroom facility enables Forge Europa to provide precise, independently verified technical data on their range of LED lamps, displays and custom assemblies. In conjunction with the company’s existing spectral analysis equipment, this provides design engineers with the full range of measurements that they are likely to require for any particular application.

Forge Europa has recently launched a comprehensive multi-lingual CD catalogue with extensive technical supporting data using the new facilities. Luminous intensity, luminance, illuminance and chromaticity data, as well as wavelength and radiation diagrams, can

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UK - With turnover predicted to grow by more than 20% this year, litestructures, one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of custom aluminium structures, truss and staging, has announced significant management changes. In order to meet the demands such growth places on the company, it has realigned the management structure for both its manufacturing and the hire divisions.

In a move which recognizes that the sales and marketing function has equal importance for the two divisions, Simon Taylor has been appointed sales and marketing director for both manufacturing and hire, while Peter Turner, previously production director for manufacturing, becomes operations director for both divisions. Adrian Brooks remains managing director.

Announcing the restructuring at a company meeting in the Wakefield head office last week, Simon Taylor told staff: "litestructures is bucking

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UK - Robbie Wilson, former head of operations at Gallowglass Ltd, and previous owner of his own event staging and barrier production company, has joined Elstree Light and Power (ELP) as special projects manager.

This new position has been created specifically to develop First Facilities - a service brand within the ELP group which will specialize in the design, manufacture and operation of custom-built solutions to mobile event problems. "Robbie has over 30 years’ experience within events, including a successful career as a tour manager in the live concert and production industry," explains ELP MD Ronan Willson. "He is the ideal man for the job and I am delighted that he has come on board."

The company is not intent on becoming another staging/rigging/event management brand, but is aiming to supply those specialist companies in each field with fully t

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Italy - On 27 May, world-famous tenor Luciano Pavarotti hosted the tenth edition of his annual Pavarotti & Friends charity concert at Novi Sad Park in his home town of Modena. The stellar cast, performing to raise funds for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (this year Iraqi refugees will receive aid from the organizers), was a cross-section of music genres: Bono, Queen, Deep Purple and Eric Clapton.

The event was transmitted live and recorded by RAI, Italy’s state TV/radio broadcaster, and this year’s technical news was audio contractor Agorà’s decision to use three recently purchased DiGiCo D5 Live consoles. Daniel Tramontani was designer and head of the complex audio set-up for the entire event - FOH, monitor, recording and broadcast. "This year’s exciting challenge was to use Agorà’s three new DiGiCo D5 consoles at this very important

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UK / USA - Following its launch at this year’s Frankfurt Musik Messe, Mackie Designs Inc is now shipping its new Tapco 6306, six-channel mixer. This is the first product in the new Tapco family, and its features include low-noise mic preamps and exceptional durability, both Mackie hallmarks.

According to Ken Berger, senior vice-president of marketing at Mackie Designs Inc, the company is committed to redefining the entry-level space by growing the Tapco family of products: "Tapco by Mackie will allow us to significantly grow our customer base by introducing Mackie technology to the entry-level market that, up to now, has had to sacrifice quality for affordability."

The Tapco 6306 features two low-noise mic preamps, two instrument inputs, a stereo aux return to monitor, two aux sends, 8-segment LED metering as well as separate phones and control room level con

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Spain - For the second year running, Blitz Communications have taken advantage of Out Board’s TiMax Production Support program to include advanced TiMax audio imaging as part of the complex audio-visual support for Opel’s European Conference event. In Valencia this spring, Blitz’s Richard Rogers chose TiMax to provide speech localisation for radio mics worn by several presenters positioned around the brand launch arena for this year’s Opel Meriva and Signum product rollouts to the motor trade. Using its Haas-Effect delay-based imaging, TiMax applied independent level/delay relationships between every mic and each distributed loudspeaker to ensure accurate localization for all audience members to maximize intelligibility and message impact.

Last year’s event in Barcelona was quite different, where Blitz used TiMax to provide atmospheric soundscapes a

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Russia - On 27 May the tsarist capital, St Petersburg, celebrated the 300th anniversary of its founding by Peter the Great in 1703. Guildia of Masters was commissioned to handle the sound for one of the most spectacular events. The festival featured a lavish programme of concerts, galas and parades and attended by VIPs and politicians of all nations. One of the highlights was the 'Summit Meeting of 44 Presidents' beside the river Neva on the 27 May, at which 15 military bands - each from a different country, with those of Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden featuring prominently - played for the assembled statesmen and an audience of 8,000.

However beautiful the setting, and however precise the choreography of the military bands, the task of providing the sound reinforcement was no walk in the park. The team from the St Petersburg-based sound company Guildia of Masters had no fewe

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USA - USITT - the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc. has accepted a permanent seat on ESTA’s new Certification Council. The Certification Council is the governing body which will manage the development and implementation of a new industry-wide certification programme for entertainment technology technicians.

USITT president Bruce Brockman has appointed Dennis Dorn, USITT vice-president for commissions and professor of theatre technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as USITT’s representative to the Council. He has also appointed Joe Aldridge, USITT vice-president for special operations, professor and technical director at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and a trustee for IATSE Local 720-Nevada Resort Association’s Training Trust as their alternate member of the Council.

President Brockman commented: "USITT strongly endorse

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Australia - System Sound of Melbourne is not your everyday PA company: its expertise is tightly focused in the areas of sound production for musical theatre and musical events. For over 15 years, virtually every major musical theatre production and the majority of musical spectaculars in Australia have been the work of this one company.Its recent work has encompassed dozens of musicals, public celebrations, festivals, orchestral concerts, and musical events, ranging from Andrea Bocelli at the Sydney Opera House and the Cats in a Tent regional tour, to the stadium tours of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Aida. The 2003 Helpmann Awards saw System with three of the four nominations for Best Sound in a Musical, eventually taking the award for its work on Cabaret.

The company’s reputation for care and quality has spread well beyond their home country. The relationships it has forged wi

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UK - 1 May saw the launch of LSD/Fourth Phase’s eagerly-awaited M Box. The skies stayed clear, the evening warmed, and as the barbecue was lit and corks pulled, the great and good of creative lighting began to arrive.

What drew them was the appearance of a new video control system which can be accessed live, in real-time, from a lighting desk. So what’s new? "What we’ve done is approach this as a light, not video," explained Mark Hunt who is responsible for all the M Box software. "That’s a crucial difference: to me video is just a secondary thing. Videos, especially movie clips, want to be scaled, rotated, colorized - and yes, you can do all those things, but M Box is not designed just to present video. For a start there’s a huge library of stock images on board - over 2,000. With M Box you’ve also got total video control, and

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UK - Electric Fly Productions, run by Nick Jevons and Philip Winward, was denied the opportunity to completely rerig a two-day live event when the rain washed away the opening day of BBC Radio 1’s One Big Weekend at Heaton Park, Manchester, recently. The pair had been looking forward to combining festival experience with the tools Jevons was first exposed to by Screenco at their Illuminated Video Workshop in autumn 2000.

Radio 1 had stepped up its One Big Sunday events from last summer to include two entirely different production platforms. In the 10,000-capacity Kayam theatre tent, Jevons’ crew was ready to break down the projected Saturday night ‘in-the-round’ 3D dance production format overnight and replace it with a conventional stage (and three-plane video backdrop) for a rock concert on Sunday - until rain forced the cancellation of the Saturday sho

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Denmark - Martin Professional has announced an additional URL address for its international website (address below). The more common ‘dot com’ address will make it easier for Internet users to locate the Martin international website. For users not familiar with Martin as a Danish-based company, it was not always obvious to use the Danish .dk ending in the company’s international www.martin.dk website address, say the company. The www.martin.dk address that users have come to know over the years will remain functional however. Martin’s subsidiary and regional website

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

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Italy - Outline H.A.R.D. 212 monitors were used on the Italian version of The Ten Commandments, the French musical which tells the story of Moses and the Israelites' escape from Egypt to the Promised Land. In Italy, it followed up on the famous Notre Dame de Paris, debuted at Milan’s Mazda Palace on 9 March 2003 and closed in Parma on 14 June. The huge 300sq.m set hosted a total of 54 artists, including 38 dancers and 16 singers.

Flown for the first time, thanks to their dedicated hardware (unique for this type of enclosure, normally used on the floor), the Outline H.A.R.D. 212 monitors were greatly appreciated for their distinctive features: ultra-low (33cm) lines, uniform off-axis dispersion over the entire audio band and linear on-axis frequency response even when the distance varies by several metres. This last characteristic ensures artists greater freed

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L&SI tracks the staging and flying system upgrades at one of Sweden’s most established theatres . . .

Sweden - The Stadsteater is one of Gothenburg’s most historic theatres. Its origins (though not the actual building) date back to 1918 when it was founded by a group of individuals keen to promote theatre to a wider audience. At the time they were based at Lorensbergsteatern, located across the street from Göteborgs Stadsteater, but in 1934 the theatre company moved to the newly constructed building situated at Götaplatsen. The building was and remains notable for its impressive functionalistic architecture. Its position at the top of the Aveny - one of the city’s fashionable streets - makes it one of Gothenburg’s most striking landmarks.

During the early part of 2002, its staging and flying systems were significantly upgraded, allowing it to r

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UK - Blink TV, pioneers of large-screen entertainment programming, have expanded their editing and production facilities in Chichester. The facility includes the addition of Dominic Dandridge to the Blink team. He joins Marcus Viner, Blink TV’s head of production and computer animation specialist Lydia Baker in the production hot seats.

Dandridge comes from an industrial design background, and joins the company having completed a degree in Product Design at Bournemouth University. Tom Colbourne is the fourth member of the team and was instrumental in creating Blink’s award-winning visuals for Kylie’s ‘Fever’ tour last year.

Blink Production occupies the top two floors of a converted mill. The new edit suite includes both Avid Express and Cinewave edit systems, complete with Sapphire effects plug-ins for the Avid. The Cinewave runs Final Cut Pro,

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UK - Out Board’s CM-Series Motor Control distros for CM chain hoists have been purchased for a variety of applications in the current 2003 season’s touring and events. Star Rigging has acquired three units of the compact CM12 (12-channel) controllers to manage 28 axes of CM Lodestar hoists deployed on a massive 200ft x 40ft “flying stunt support truss.” Designed by Phil Broad and Gavin Weatherall for veteran boyband Westlife’s current arena tour, ‘Unbreakable’, the structure comes complete with I-beams along its length and breadth, used to float a substage out over the audience during the performance. A further CM12 is used on the main stage to animate five flying video screens, automated by an Ibex programmable hoist controller system. Star also purchased two CM6 six-channel controllers for rigging duties at the Albert Hall book launch of

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Italy - Sir Paul McCartney broke from his Back in the World European tour to give a memorable free concert to around 500,000 people gathered outside the Colosseum in Rome during May.

ESS built the main stage, a major undertaking since the sightlines needed to be kept clear to the Colloseum, yet it had to be capable of carrying the 60 tons of flown equipment. Big screen specialists Screenco meanwhile, joined forces with Nocturne Productions - the tour’s contracted video production company - to provide an inventory of 25mm LED displays, which were staggered down the Via dei Fori Imperiale in front of the famous landmark.

The former Beatle played for almost three hours, and for the majority in the audience, their main contact with the legendary performer was via the five 18sq.m screens, the stage action being relayed to the Screenco displays via Nocturne’s production

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Dubai - PALME, the Middle East’s professional sound, light, audio-visual and systems integration exhibition, is offering PLASA members a 25% discount off its space-only rate until 1 September 2003 (inclusive), or a 15% discount off the space-only rate thereafter.

There are strong reasons to justify attending: the Middle East continues to present the professional lighting and sound industries with significant market potential and is the world’s fastest growing tourist destination, predicted to attract 68.5 million tourists by 2020 - an annual growth rate of 7.1%, well above the world average of 4.1%.The region, and the UAE in particular, continue to invest huge sums in new, architecturally-driven initiatives which require state-of-the-art facilities to be competitive. Projects in development include the Kempinski Hotel on The Palm island (US$50 million); The Gardens s

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