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UK - The internationally renowned "physical theatre" group DV8 embarked upon a world tour this spring with their new production Just for Show. The performance is about inventing a new reality for yourself when the one you encounter is not what you hoped for. This is an especially resonant theme for a touring theatre company as each venue throws up its own particular problems which have to be rapidly overcome before the show can begin. And first among these is the stage itself.

DV8 bought an initial package of Metrodeck last year and have now invested in substantial further stock which is used to build a large raked stage. The ease with which a stable Metrodeck stage can be set up and taken down is a massive help to a touring company - especially one whose work is

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Canada - To celebrate its first 25 years of existence, Montreal-based MDG Fog Generators is 'refreshing' its corporate signature and its image. Known worldwide for their high quality fog generators, the company says: "MDG wants an image that reflects this quality, this reliability tested and tried since a quarter of a century. Just as its range of products, the new corporate look contains only the essential elements. No complications, nothing superfluous. The three letters speak for themselves. MDG is a company that continuously betters not only its products, but the excellence of its service and its international network of distributors. MDG is very proud to be a privileged link between different creators and users, whether they stem from the entertainment, industrial or military sectors."

Martin Michaud, president of the company, says: "The corporate image must

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USA - Used by the likes of Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr, successful sound technicians, and all US Presidents since Lyndon Johnson, industry leader Shure Inc has enjoyed an 80-year history at the forefront of the professional audio industry. Today, however, the company celebrates an important new milestone: the one-year anniversary of its Personal Audio Business Unit (PABU), a division of Shure specifically designed to put professional-grade audio products into the hands of consumers.

Driven by the early success of its award-winning E Series line of sound isolating earphones and QuietSpot mobile headsets, over the past year Shure has become synonymous in the consumer electronics industry with top-of-the-line audio accessories. These products marry Shure's deep professional roots with a keen understanding of the influences driving consumer demand. Shure's early acknowledge

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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 - The WEEE man, designed by Paul Bonomini, is a huge robotic figure made of scrap electrical and electronic equipment. It weighs 3.3 tonnes and stands seven metres tall - representing the average amount of electronic products every single one of us throws away over a lifetime. It was installed in April 2005 on London's South Bank.

Stage One Creative Services approached Tony Hall of Essential Lighting to provide lighting to the WEEE Man project. Under the direction of Paul Bonomini, Tony devised a system using eight SGM Palco 3 LED floodlights, to light the sculpture from around the base, with an additional unit being built into the sculpture as its "heart". The Palco floods were chosen specifically because of their IP65 rating, low power consumption required and the stunning array of colours produced.

Additional effects lighting was installed into the sculpture, i

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USA - Elation Control Systems has the newest member of the Show Designer lighting controller series - Show Designer 2CF - which features a built-in compact flash drive. Faster and more reliable than a disk, the compact flash drive lets users store the controller's entire memory on one 64MB compact flash card, say Elation. Offering control over 1,024 DMX channels, as opposed to the standard 512 channels, the Show Designer 2CF has two universe outputs that can be "split" to run entirely different lighting presentations in two separate rooms or areas. Great for concerts, stage productions and clubs, it commands up to 48 fixtures (up to 32 channels each) with 1,152 programmable chases, 4,752 programmable scenes, 1,152 programmable shows and 1,152 programmable presets.

"One major advantage of the Show Designer 2CF's built-in compact flash drive is that it's more depend

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Germany - No, not the latest turn in the LED patent battle, but an arty installation designed by New York artist Steven Rand (represented in Germany by Schueppenhauer Gallery, Cologne). Rand's design, chosen in a competition to create a work for the façade of the European Patent Office in Munich, uses 81 of Color Kinetics' ColorBlast12 units, installed along the perimeter of the ceiling outside the building's main entrance, which measures approximately 154 by 54ft (47 by 16m) and 45ft (14m) high. The ColorBlast 12 units project saturated, coloured light across the ceiling's surface, and are precisely programmed to morph through a full spectrum of 16.7 million colours over the course of one year, changing imperceptibly every two seconds. In that one-year timeframe, no exact colour will appear twice. The entire light show will begin to repeat itself with each new year.

Rand says:

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Germany - Laser show specialist Lobo presented itself again as the largest exhibitor in the laser show market at two recent major exhibitions recently - Pro Light&Sound in Frankfurt and PALME in Dubai. At these events, visitors could view the laser show 'The Circus' (originally produced for the 'Summernights' of the Holiday Park in Hassloch) every half hour. This show, along with the beam show 'Massive Impact', was honoured by the International Laser Display Association with the ILDA-Award 2004 'Best Beam Show'.

As technical innovations, Lobo presented the stand-alone version of the Zaphir laser moving head, which was introduced last year. Zaphir is based on the reliable, fast and precise Varyscan 7-series from JB-Lighting, and uses Lobo's fast and precise scanning systems, and high-grade optical systems, to produce high quality displays of graphics and even full-coverage 'Scanl

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Denmark - Nearly three tons of specialized lighting clamps and rigging equipment have been supplied to the new Copenhagen Opera House by Doughty Engineering of Ringwood, Hampshire, UK. The Opera House in Copenhagen is a gift to the country from the A. P. Moeller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Moeller Foundation (Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller - the son of A. P. Moeller - is the owner of Maersk Airlines, shipping, containers, freight etc and is the richest person in Denmark.)

The building costs of the opera, which was handed over to the Danish people on 1 October 2004, are estimated to have been in the region of £300m. Doughty Engineering's Danish distributor, Highlight DK, say that the choice of Doughty product for the project was due to the purchasers giving the highest priority to safety and reliability than anything else. The equipment was specified by Soren Nylin, the technical consultan

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UK - The new Frog clips from Hall Stage provide "a simple and highly effective line connection for anything on a lanyard, including torches, tools and telephones - even riggers working at height," say the company. Rated with a shock loading of 22kN and designed to EN 362, Frog clips can be safely used as an alternative to carabiners and connect easily on to steel wire rope catenaries up to10mm - or belt clips for those heavy bunches of keys. Attached with an easy, one-handed action, Frog clips look set to find favour with riggers and technicians everywhere.

You can see the full range at the ABTT Trade Show in London, 15-16 of June.

(Lee Baldock)

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USA - City Theatrical reports that its WDS Wireless Data System is all over Broadway and the on the road this spring, playing an important part in nearly every new musical and many plays. New musicals with WDS installations include, Little Women, Sweet Charity, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mambo Kings, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (WDS supplied by PRG NJ). Other long-running musicals with WDS installed include Tony Award winners Hairspray and Lion King, as well as Fiddler on the Roof (also WDS by PRG NJ). Recent Broadway straight plays to utilize WDS include the productions of Julius Caesar, and Sly Fox (WDS supplied by GSD Productions).

Shows touring the US this spring using WDS installations include Wicked tours 1 and 2, Contact, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Movin' Out (WDS supplied by PRG NJ). Non-Broadway show

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Canada - Cast Software has hired Joshua Koffman, formerly of Spectrum Manufacturing Inc, to join its marketing department as assistant product manager. Koffman will focus primarily on the continual development of WYSIWYG, Cast's flagship lighting design software. "I'm thrilled to be joining Cast's team, and hope to encourage users to share their thoughts and ideas", says Koffman. "It's an exciting place to be with the recent launch of Vivien and the ongoing development of WYSIWYG. I believe my lighting expertise will only complement Cast's innovative approach to creating software for the entertainment industry."

"Josh brings unique expertise and a new perspective that will enable us to improve our software offerings," says Ben Sanford, director of marketing for Cast. "We have a diverse group of industry professionals on our product management t

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UK - Brähler ICS UK Limited, working with AV installation specialist Willow SoundVision, has completed the installation of a new integrated discussion and voting system in the main council chamber at Northampton Borough Council. To bring the chamber up to 21st century standards, Brähler supplied its standard microphone and electronic voting system, built around their reliable stalwart CDS-200 conference management system. The flexibility of the system is further enhanced by the power of Brähler's CDS-VAN virtual audio network, a DSP-based audio processing environment.

The DV200 delegate units incorporate voting buttons, microphone, ChipCard reader and loudspeaker for voice-raising, while the Chairman's unit includes a priority button for remote control of speaking rights. The units are portable and can easily be moved to various locations, depending on the layout of the room.

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UK - 5 Star Cases Limited, the Wisbech based manufacturer recently supplied a large number of new style cases for moving head lights. The trunk is an adaption from an existing design and this particular unit was to house the Robe 1200AT. The design department at 5 Star set about re-designing the trunk using the recently installed 3D modelling software. This enables the designers to produce a 'virtual case' to the exact dimensions including all appropriate case fittings etc.

Once the design had been verified, various renderings of the trunk was e-mailed to Blackburn based HSL who were the first to benefit from this updated designed trunk and placed an order for 167 units. Minor modifications were carried out to the 'model' to cater for HSL's specific requirements. The trunks house twin moving light units, however a unique feature is the option to add a separate door to convert th

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UK - Now under new ownership, Unitek Displays has announced the release of its upgraded V Series LED screens - suitable for large-scale applications from concert touring to stadium banners.

The modular high-resolution LED screens - including the V5 (10mm pixel pitch), V9 (17.5mm) and V12 (25mm) - have been optimized by the introduction of Unitek's ONE processor, which can drive up to 768 x 576 pixel screens operating in native PAL, NTSC or SECAM. One features an infinitely variable Aspect Ratio Converter and programmable colour control, with unique motion/definition image enhancement feature.

"The beauty of this processor is that all the scan and aspect ratio conversion takes place in a single box," says electronics engineer, Alan Drake. Because the signal is only being processed once, the delay time from camera to screen is reduced to a single frame, or 40 milliseco

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Italy - Cult Italian television programme Zelig Circus broadcast on Canale 5, has been a phenomenal success with both public and critics. Today, 18 years after its formation as a cabaret venue in Milan, Zelig continues to seek out new talents in Italian comedy. Zelig 2005 is housed in the 3,500sq.m marquee theatre of Sesto San Giovanni.

Since last year's show, the set has been rebuilt from scratch: the theme is a port, with boats, piers, lifejackets, ropes and jetties, covering a stage of 150sq.m. To illuminate the set, a Clay Paky lighting system has been chosen (supplied by Xenon), which uses 20 Stage Color 1200s, 20 Stage Zooms 1200s and 16 Super Scan Zooms.

The scanners and moving body luminaires are placed geometrically on the truss system above the stage and auditorium, whilst other Stage Color and Stage Zoom appliances are placed on the ground for the lateral bea

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UK - London's Richmond Studios recorded the soundtrack of Kylie's spectacular Showgirl tour at Earls Court for the 7 May television broadcast on Channel 4 and subsequent DVD release. The tour, playing its last few days in the UK before heading to Australia, was recorded on 6 May by Richmond Studios' location recording team, headed by company founder Toby Alington, in one of Sanctuary's recording mobiles.

Blink TV was the television production company, with Russell Thomas directing. CTV provided vision facilities with Bill Morris as OB unit manager. CTV produced a 13-camera shoot, recording onto 15 digital VTRs with a 30ft Super Technocrane, various aerial camera systems and a crew of over 50 on site. The show is Richmond's second recording for Kylie within a year - the last being at Hammersmith Odeon with a one-off concert performed specially for TV and DVD. This run of s

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UK - Annual General Meetings are a legal requirement but, truthfully, can be dull, intimidating and best avoided. The Professional Lighting and Sound Association (PLASA), however, is determined that its AGM and Members Lunch, which takes place on Tuesday 14 June 2005, will not be a wasted opportunity but rather a memorable day out for its members and guests. In response to membership feedback PLASA has planned an interactive and sociable member-focused event, with the late-morning AGM offering a chance to catch up on what PLASA has been doing over the past year.

Members will be welcomed at the unique setting of BAFTA's prestigious Headquarters in central London and it is anticipated that the business of the day will be over within an hour allowing time for members to ask questions of the executive committee, raise issues and take part in a debate about what matter most to them.

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USA - US production sound services provider and sound contractor Simon Productions recently completed the design and installation of two programmable DSP distributed audio systems in the Los Angeles area, using Allen & Heath's iDR Series. The two systems - which both incorporate 10-input/10-output iDR-8 digital mix processors, as well as PL-4 wallplate controllers - were installed at the luxury Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel and UCLA's James West Alumni Centre in Westwood.

According to Simon Productions' Terry Stewart, the new audio set-up at the beachfront Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel replaced a traditional 70V ceiling system for background music. The Allen & Heath iDR-8 provides control and processing for a new digital jukebox that serves the public areas on the entrance level of the hotel. "What they wanted was a more high-end looking and sounding system, more hi-tech,

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UK - Sennheiser UK is exhibiting at the Museums and Heritage Show from 11-12 May at Earls Court, London. Sennheiser will feature a number of specialized audio products for the Museums and Heritage market, including AudioBeam loudspeakers, audio tourguide systems and infrared audio systems for hearing impaired people. Visitors to the stand can also receive information on Sennheiser Digital Conference systems and APart Mask loudspeakers - aesthetically discreet products that can provide audio for a single exhibit or combine to form a complete PA system.

Sennheiser AudioBeam is a directional loudspeaker that is able to focus sound like the light beam of a torch. Unlike conventional loudspeakers, which are only able to focus sound at high frequencies, AudioBeam emits sound as a lobe that can be precisely directed and is reflected by objects. AudioBeam works with ultra-sound, modulat

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UK - A new range of solar-powered LED tiles have been introduced by the Light Projects Group. Based on an original concept by Sutton Vane Associates, the Tsola is a recessed LED unit - suitable for both horizontal and vertical applications - which uses natural daylight to create energy-free lighting. It is available in two sizes (198 x 99mm or 198 x 198mm) and in six standard LED colours: red, green, blue, amber, orange and white.

Able to charge in both clear and overcast conditions, a waterproof IP68 rating, and operating temperature between -40°C and 70°C and resistance to point and impact load, Tsola tiles can be used in the most demanding applications, say Light Projects. As it requires no electrical supply or maintenance, it is ideal for retro-fitting to existing areas where it is unacceptable or impractical to lay new electrical cable. It can also be installed by non-ele

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UK - LTM- Lift-Turn-Move - has launched its second catalogue, featuring 32 pages of products, services and information. This follows LTM's recent move to larger premises, just seven months after it's inception.

LTM's John Jones says, "The first catalogue took eight days from start to print. I hoped the second catalogue would allow more time but we only had three weeks as we wanted to be ready for the Prolight & Sound exhibition. It was complicated by waiting to finalize the move with all the new address details."

The catalogue details LTM's core area of business - electric chain hoists - for which it's a European importer and distributor of the CM Lodestar. In addition to the Lodestar, LTM sells a wide variety of lifting products including the cost-effective Lodestar Direct Control motor - which operates with a power cable only, and the BGV-C1 units, which meets the

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