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UK - Liverpool's third HUB Festival - a mix of art, music and extreme sports staged at the Pier Head - expanded and featured several new elements this year.

The event is the brainchild of the Council's Liverpool Culture Company and included music, skateboarding and BMX competitions, graffiti art exhibitions and music performed by many excellent local bands

Kirstie Blakeman, event manager, explained that they had created a new look main stage under the cover of a single king pole, purple membrane tent supplied by Wangos, which was chosen for its aesthetics. She added: "With the event being held at Liverpool's waterfront World Heritage Site we wanted something unique and different looking, something really special and dynamic for the music zone this year - not just another st

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Indonesia - Jakarta's new Sands International Executive Club is a luxurious multi-entertainment 'mega club' comprising a restaurant, live theatre, discotheque, wine bar, chill-out bar, and spa centre, all fitted with Allen and Heath mixing products. Encompassing three floors - with plans for expansion - Sands is classically designed with high ceilings, gilded walls, marble floors, plush carpeting, and crystal chandeliers. The owners appointed Singapore's Electro-Systems Industries to design and install the sound reinforcement systems, in partnership with project co-ordinator, Peter Loh Productions, catering for the complex AV requirements of the venue.

The Grand Ballroom and Dining Theatre make up the largest live performance area in the club, divided by a partition wall to enable the venue to host independent functions or combine and expand the rooms for bigger functions. The s

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USA - In June, Tomcat USA completed a custom project for the San Francisco Opera, designing and building a tetrahedral barrier for their production of La Forza del Destino, which is scheduled to run in November. The components of this special barrier are three 37ft legs of custom medium duty spigoted truss (each leg consisting of three sections of custom spigoted MD). These legs are connected with slew rings in the centre of each section, including spring-loaded pins that lock each section into place when they twist. The chords of the truss were constructed with box tube, making it easier to connect the cladding set pieces to be created in house at the Opera.

Custom stage sockets were another part of the project: these allow the barrier's legs to lock into the stage floor, after it is lowered from the grid. The design allows the legs to rotate as it is lowered, revealing

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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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Denmark - The Xhibition Bar is the new casino floor bar at the Harrah's Casino in Atlantic City.

Opened on President's Day weekend the 360 degree bar features the customary slot machines and table games, but it's a color coordinated lighting and video system that gives the bar its character.

Surrounding more than 300 towering bottles on the interior of the bar are sixteen 50" plasma screens that reveal sensual video content set to pulsating Top 40 metro music. Further in are two rows of Martin Alien 05 color changers - an outer row of 24 plus an inner row of 24 - illuminating liquor bottles on vertical liquor racks. Added to this are four circles of colour changing Color Kinetics LED fixtures surrounding the bar. In a touch that gives the bar its stylish feel, the LED and Aliens are colour coordinated with the video on the plasma screens.

The Alien 05 lighting was desig

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UK - Washington D.C.-based Presentation Services is an outside lighting vendor for the largest hotel in the city - the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, and the Zero 88 Fat Frog is their console of choice. Presentation Services won the contract for lighting events at the hotel in January 2004. In their first year competing against outside vendors, Presentation Services won almost $3 million in lighting and video equipment contracts alone. "We go after every group that comes into the hotel," says technical director and lead technician Aaron Kramer. "A lot of the groups that come in here, however, have national contracts, but we've still handled events for the Big Brother Big Sister program - where Laura Bush spoke in support, corporate Marriot events and others."

In 2004, Presentation Services invested $176,000 in new lighting equipment and purchased a Zero 88 Fat

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Ireland - Bandit Lites supplied Production North with full lighting production for the first Cork Festival of Music, titled Live at the Marquee, and staged by Aiken Promotions in a near-5,000 capacity big top at the Monster Showground, Cork. The event, part of the City's year as European Capital of Culture, has been so successful that moves are afoot for it to become a regular fixture on Cork's annual entertainment calendar. The two weeks of live music featured a diverse line up of national and international artists, ranging from Christie Moore to the Gypsy Kings, Ronan Keating to Nick Cave.

Production North came onboard to supply the entire technical infrastructure, with the unflappable Steve Levitt at the helm, production and site managing. With some fast back-to-back changes needed, he wanted to ensure that all bands received their own required standards of lighting, a

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China - China's National Broadcaster CCTV has selected HK Audio's Cohedra Coherent Dynamic Response Array system for its Studio 1, from where the prestigious CCTV New Year Gala TV show is broadcast to over one billion Chinese people at home and abroad. Studio 1 was constructed on the site of a circular garden alongside the main CCTV building in 1997. The 1600 square metre building, which can seat 800, was purpose-built for the New Year Gala show and other large-scale live broadcast programs. As the studio was constrained by the shape of the garden, it is also circular in shape, meaning that improving the sound quality has become a constant challenge to the CCTV audio department, and this is why CCTV chose to install the Cohedra system. Sixteen CDR 208 T/S mid-high cabinets have been installed into the room where they have already been used for shows such as Joyride in China - Seve

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USA - Chauvet at PLASA will launch a series of high power 40mW to 80mW lasers with the introduction of the Scorpion Scan 40 and the Scorpion Scan 80 green lasers, plus the Scorpion 55RG-64 red and green laser. Presented in distinctive metallic red casings, these three high-efficiency lasers respond to DMX-512 control via seven channels. They also operate on stand-alone mode via DMX and in master/slave mode. Each yields more than 200 laser effects achieved through controlled variations in the speed of scanning, the speed of 40 preset dynamic patterns and adjustments in the size of 40 pre-set static patterns and X and Y positioning.

They use scanning mirrors for pattern projection and positioning, creating the broad range of effects. Scorpion Scan 40 and Scorpion 80 are outfitted with a 40mW laser diode and an 80mW diode, respectively, yielding highly intense beams. Scorpion 55RG-

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UK - When Faceparty, organizer of London's Big Gay Out festival in north London, wanted lighting for its dance tent, it gave the brief as "to create an 80s-style rave environment." With the help of PRG Europe - who also supplied lighting for the main stage and the alternative music tent - they did just that.

The event, held on Saturday 23 July, is the successor to London's Pride festival, and hosted 20,000 people at the Big Mutha main stage and 11 other stages and tents in Finsbury Park.

"For the main stage, we created a big automated lighting rig, to cater for all requirements, and offer greater flexibility live," said lighting designer Mike Sobotnicki, contracted by PRG Europe from Imagination. "Until we saw the rehearsals, we had no idea what would be needed. We had three overhead lighting positions, to create symmetrical patterns of beams through h

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UK - For the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II the Ministry of Defence engaged Unusual Services to provide production services for a weeklong programme of events.

The main focus of the week was on Sunday 10 July with an event staged on Horse Guards Parade for 11,000 veterans. Edwin Shirley Staging built a 40m x 25m stage with sound supplied by Wigwam, lighting provided by PRG Europe and a 160m scenic wall from Centrestage. Other key suppliers included Search, Power Logistics, Arena Seating, Unusual Rigging, Screenco, Show & Event, Dobson Sound, Delta Sound, Thorns and National Radio Bank.

During the week leading up to the celebrations, images of previously unseen World War II photographs were projected onto the façade of Buckingham Palace. In addition an 85m x 30m tented Veterans Centre was installed in St. James's Park along with a Living Museum, Press Centre, a BB

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USA - TL Audio will be staging the US launch of the new M4 Tube Console at the 119th AES convention in New York in October.

The M4 has been designed to maximize today's production techniques, say the company. Available in 16, 24, and 32 channel configurations, the M4 Tube Console combines that classic valve sound with modern functionality. With excellent valve processing, and digital output options, it makes the ideal front end solution for digital recording set ups.

TL Audio can be found on stand 446 at AES, Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre, New York, 7 October - 10 October 2005.

(Sarah Rushton-Read)

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USA - Greg Norgeot, Paul Sharwell and Angus Sinex of the lighting design partnership Unlimited Visibility Lighting Design recently lit the Oprah Winfrey Live Your Best Life workshop tour in multiple locations across the US.

Hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine, the Live Your Best Life tour was billed as "A day with friends, an afternoon with Oprah." The all-day workshop consisted of a morning of motivational entertainment and esteem-building exercises, followed by a presentation featuring Oprah Winfrey herself in the afternoon. UVLD's Greg Norgeot designed the lighting for the event; Paul Sharwell, assisted by Angus Sinex, was charged with recreating the design on each stop of the tour.

"This was quite different from most of the shows that we light," remarked Norgeot of the Live Your best Life tour. "Whereas most events we design

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UK - XL Video supplied Oasis with a seven-camera DPU including one of its new GV Zodiac vision mixing desks, three 'Magic' DVE's, a matrix switcher and Dataton control for its UK stadium tour. XL also supplied a Catalyst digital media server used by the show's artistic director and lighting designer Andi Watson.

The band's overall video production was coordinated by video director Dick Carruthers' company, Cheese Film & Video Productions, with touring video production manager Dave Wright overseeing the 35 video crew.

The show is a dynamic, pacey mix of live camera and specially created playback sources onto six LED screens - four onstage which moved up and down on a Kinesys vari-speed automation system, and stage left and right side screens.

Carruthers and programmer Richard Turner maximized XL's pre-programming facilities for prepping the show at its Hertfordshire HQ, worki

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UK - Leading UK audio rental house Britannia Row has purchased 32 crown Xs amplifiers from Harman Pro UK.

These went straight into rehearsals with some of the best known rock 'n' roll stars on the planet - including Pink Floyd, The Who, Madonna, Elton John and Robbie Williams in the run up to Live 8. "So as you can deduce from that, we were pretty confident we had a superlative product" states Brit Row's Roly Oliver. The company provided discreet monitor systems for all these maverick performers in the run up to their appearances at Live 8 London.

The amplifiers were then used to power the monitor system for the historic Live 8 gig in Hyde Park. It's the first time Britannia Row has ever bought Crown explains Oliver, "We did a listening test against several other amplifiers and nothing even came near the Xs in terms of build quality and value for money." He

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USA - 'A sensory overload' is what Toshiba wanted for its corporate meeting 15-20 May in Miami. Plus the design had to enhance Terry Bradshaw and The Beach Boys, who would also take the stage.

"Our design objective was to create an immersive environment resulting in a sensory overload that would work in tandem with automated lighting," says veteran LD Bill Strother of Carrollton, TX, who was called in to set the scene.

To carry out his design, Strother selected six High End Systems DL1 digital light fixtures and a Catalyst Pro Media Server, supplied by Zenith Lighting of Orlando.

"The set - provided by the client - was a vast array of different Spandex shapes," Strother explains. "With that many differing surfaces for projection, we had to be able to hit as many as we could with only six projectors - knowing that it would be very difficult to gauge t

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UK - Building on the success of the previous two years, the third ABTT Summer School takes place during the first week August at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry from Monday, 1 August - Friday, 5 August inclusive.

The courses are for members of the ABTT wishing to develop their career in the industry by learning new skills or refreshing their knowledge of individual subjects. This year sees three firsts; the launch of the Silver Award courses, alongside the established Bronze Award, full accreditation of all courses by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama and ABTT's active involvement in Skillscene, the organization developing industry standards for the live arts.

Open to members of the ABTT only, a few places remain for the Sound Technicians course for this year.

Also during the same week, the ABTT Road Show will be held on Wednesday 3 August 2005, at the same venue at

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UK/Europe - Avril Lavigne's show at London's Carling Hammersmith Apollo had the packed audience screaming for more as crunchy guitars filled the air and the kick drum vibrated throughout the audience. FOH engineer John Kerns looked pleased as he watched the crowd response. "This is probably the first time I have taken a real rock show out with a Meyer loudspeaker system," Kerns admits. Having taken over FOH duties from Jim Yakabuski partway through Lavigne's extensive European and American tour, Kerns found himself in the capable hands of Audio Analysts system technician Brett Dicus. "Jim came up with a setup that he really liked," explains Dicus, "which was Meyer mains and a centre sub-hang. That is our priority whenever possible. The Meyer high-end energy from about 5kHz on up can't be beaten. We find we do not have to do the usual boosts for intelligibi

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UK - Among the many new products being shown by Audio-Technica at this year's PLASA exhibition, is the completely re-engineered UniPoint Series. The original full-line miniaturized, condenser range of installation sound microphones, UniPoint has been wholly upgraded utilizing breakthrough audio and mechanical design improvements, to set new standards for signal quality, reliability, and ease of installation.

UniPoint comprises over 30 gooseneck mounted, boundary and suspension models, designed for the widest range of applications, in sound reinforcement, theatre sound, broadcast production and recording. New features for the Series include UniGuard RFI-shielding innovations, new interchangeable condenser elements (cardioid, hypercardioid, omnidirectional and UniLine line cardioid), superior off-axis rejection for improved gain before feedback, 80 Hz UniSteep filter, and two-stag

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USA - Hilary Duff has seemingly done it all at the ripe old age of nearly 18. Stage actress, film and television star (she was Lizzie McGuire on the TV show of the same name), she even has her own clothing line. And oh yes, she also finds time to sing.

Hilary Duff kicked off her Still Most Wanted tour in LA in July and will be touring the US through September. Teaming up on the tour are the Martin Maxxyz lighting console and Maxedia media server along with MAC 2000 Wash, MAC 300 wash lights, VL3000s and conventionals, all in the hands of lighting designer Seth Jackson. Tour lighting supplier is Bandit Lites.

"The plot was changing up until a day before the truck loaded," Jackson commented. "If it weren't for the flexibility of the crew (Sam Harden, BK Waggoner and Billy Willingham) and the endless amounts of drawings and input from Dizzy Gosnell, I doubt

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UK - Star Events Group was recently involved with the series of spectacular shows that took place at the Tower of London during July this year. The client, Planit Events approached Star Orbit requiring a 20m five bay flat back Orbit stage structure to be positioned in the moat surrounding the Tower for five nights of grand opera and six nights of jazz.

One of the main stipulations from the client was the need to effectively seat and protect from the elements a 60-piece orchestra without obscuring the onstage artists and disrupting audience sightlines. Mike Goodwin (Star Orbit) and the Star Design team collaborated with Planit to devise an under-stage Orchestra pit that provided the shelter the orchestra members required whilst maintaining the sound quality. This was achieved by extending the front of the stage floor out and over the heads of the musicians. Onstage the stunning c

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UK - Leisuretec Distribution has been recognized as an Investor in People organization after achieving the Standard in February 2005.

"We are fully committed to developing our people's skills in order to achieve our wider business aims and objectives. We have used the Investors in People planning process to address our needs and have now implemented a training and development programme. We will consistently evaluate this to ensure our workforce has the most up to date skills so that we can continue to build upon our success," commented Suzannah Hawkins, business development manager for Leisuretec Distribution.

Ruth Spellman, chief executive of Investors in People UK comments: " Putting people development at the heart of every function is the most cost effective decision a business can make. Employees are central to business success so it is vital for staff to be

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