Details
UK - Multiple Brit Award-winner Scissor Sisters has employed the services of Specialz to custom design and build an illuminated curved sign that incorporates their famous logo - the scissors with legs. The dramatic, sparkling sign has 4ft letters spelling out 'Scissor Sisters' with the 9.5ft glyph motif in-between.

The 16-part sign and has over 800 15W E14 prismatic light fittings which are across three circuits to enable chasing. The sign and transportation dollies were built in 10 working days. The effect of this sign works well with the artistic nature of Scissor Sisters and their cabaret style. The overall look creates an amazing Moulin Rouge spectacle on the stage.

Scissor Sisters lighting designer David Ross commented: "From the initial phone call to reality, the whol

Details
UK - Serious Stages supplied two of its new 25m Space Roof structures for the main stages at both Leeds and Reading sites creating a new look for the Mean Fiddler's flagship Carling Weekend Festival event.

Serious also supplied decked staging for most of the tented stages at both festivals, including the Carling, NME/Radio 1 and Comedy stages, the Dance Arena, plus the Lee Sounds Live at Leeds.

The Space Roof is a new product, launched by Serious earlier in the year. Its first outing was as Glastonbury's Other Stage, and the 25m version is one of the largest complete temporary festival staging systems available in the UK.

The Space Roof features a substantial eight tonne distributed load bearing capacity, which will accommodate all types of production requirements for flying lighting, video, sets, etc.

The Leeds and Reading Space stages measured 25m wide by 26m deep and al

Details
UK - Steve Hoffman, director of sales for Gamproducts Inc of Los Angeles, California has announced the introduction of two new SX4 gobo changer trays. "Designers now have the ability to effortlessly project multiple gobo pattern images from just one lighting instrument, saving power and space," says Hoffman.

The SX4 B size gobo changer tray holds four B size metal or glass gobos and the M size gobo changer tray holds six metal or glass M size gobos. "Changing gobo direction is simply done using the onboard stand alone program modes, or to create your own custom gobo changes you can use any DMX-controlled lighting board," says Hoffman.

The SX4 was built for the rugged demands and duty cycles of the architectural, retail, display, and theme park markets.

(Lee Baldock)

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

Details
UK/Canada - Photonic Products Ltd, is sponsoring Paul Cocksedge as a keynote speaker at IIDEX/NeoCon, Canada, 22-23 September 2005, in Toronto.

Paul Cocksedge is one of the UK's most exciting lighting designers working today and will present his lighting designs plus an overview of the latest products, designers, innovations in technology and emerging lighting trends coming out of the UK today.

"Crystallize", designed by Paul Cocksedge for the Swarovski Crystal Palace Collection, is a chandelier made from light. When there is no light the chandelier disappears. Using lasers and crystals in perfect alignment, the iconic shape of a Swarovski crystal is drawn in mid air. At the heart of the chandelier is a single crystal which sparkles as it catches the light.

The development of this chandelier was made using Photonic Products' green laser modules.

The 532nm DPSS gr

Details
UK - HSL Group Holdings is exhibiting at PLASA 2005 for the first time in its own right, highlighting a diverse range of products and services.

The Blackburn-based company has three divisions - HSL Rental, HSL Rigging and HSL Sales and Distribution. In addition to illustrating its own products and projects, HSL is joined on its stand by some key suppliers, including Rope Assemblies and Radical Lighting. The latter will be demonstrating the latest version of their NG1 digital media server.

HSL will be showing several new products designed in-house. These include the 500Kg DMX mirror ball rotator, the DMX controlled Snow Dropper and a range of Check-IT plugs and sockets.

Highlighted at the show is HSL's own brand of PA/delay tower system - the Totem Tower 2T-V - capable of lifting loads up to two tonnes. The 2T-V tower is suitable for hanging all types of PA either from a one

Details
UK - The Liverpool Culture Company this year gave the City's Mathew Street festival a compete makeover, resulting in record crowds of up to 350,000 enjoying Europe's largest free urban live music festival.

The three-day event culminated on the August Bank Holiday Monday with six stages in and around the city centre, featuring top live performers from all over the world. Liverpool Culture Company's general manager of events, Lee Forde explains that the Culture Company took over full control of this year's event: "It was an absolutely essential move to keep the festival progressing and diversifying."

Two stages were installed at the Pier Head for the first time - North and South. The North stage was effectively the main stage. On the Sunday, it featured The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, Tony Christie, The Christians, Liverpool Express and Neville Skelly among others. The

Details
UK - During the forthcoming PLASA Show (11-14 September, Earls Court 1, London), PLASA is planning to launch a new National Rigging Award, and would like to invite members of the rigging community to a short presentation to be held on Monday 12 September, from 11.30am - 12.00pm. During the presentation, PLASA's representatives will give an overview of the structure and criteria that the Association hopes to apply to the proposed PLASA National Rigging Award.

An article from the September issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine, which also appeared in the August issue of PLASA's Standards News, explains the background to this new initiative - read it here.

If you would like to attend, or nominate a colleague in your place, please RSVP to the e-mail address below.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
Italy - Ribalta from Italian manufacturer SGM is a colour-changing projector utilizing 90 Luxeon LEDs to provide colour washes over large areas such as walls, theatre and television backdrops, and architectural elements. The IP65-rated unit is suited to both indoor and outdoor use.

Other features include RGB colour mixing, high-power Luxeon LEDs 30 blue (1W), 30 green (3W), 30 red (1W); Luminous flux 3,000 Lumens; Colour temperature: 5,500°K (variable); interchangeable lenses - 8° asymmetric, 30° asymmetric, 10°x 90° (elliptical) horizontal and vertical; pan: +/- 45° and tilt: +15° / -70°.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
UK - The organizrs of the PLASA Show have advised that pre-registration for this year's show )11-14 September) closes today at 5pm so today is the last chance for visitors to benefit from the half-price tickets. However, visitors will still be able to purchase tickets on the door at the full price of £15. To pre-register today, please visit the website below.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
Sweden / UK - Wireless Solution Sweden AB, the producer of the award-winning W-DMX product at PLASA 2004, is again entering the PLASA Awards for Innovation with the new W-DMX IP65 Repeater - "a new and innovative product in the W-DMX family that brings the wireless technology for lighting one step further", say the company. The repeater solves a lot of problems for productions and installation companies, for example differences with very long distances or physical obstacles, the company claims, as it supports a distance up to 20km between each repeater.

Wireless Solution Sweden is also showing the W-DMX IP65 Transceiver, which supports RDM. All W-DMX products offer talk-back function, and the plug and play solution can be set up in less then 60 seconds, the company says. W-DMX follows the standard of ETSI and FCC to cover the European and the North American market.

L

Details
Italy / South-East Asia - Italian pro audio manufacturer Outline has appointed Discovery Lights & Sound Pte Ltd as its sole distributors for Singapore and Malaysia, with effect from 20 July 2005. The sales and technical staff of Discovery have around 30 years experience in the entertainment industry and Outline has told LSI Online it has every confidence in their capability to support its customers in these territories.

(Lee Baldock)

Details
USA - Boston's AVFX serves clients such as Medtronic, Philips Medical, IBM Software and TJX (the parent company of retail chain TJ Maxx), and has gained a reputation for having the latest media technology, the know-how to use it, and the experience to understand how to best service corporate needs.

Although much of AVFX's emphasis has always been on visual media (multi-image projection was the rage when the company started in the early 1980s), the company has also supplied sound systems for years. One of their long-time audio mainstays has been the classic UPA-1A loudspeaker, which AVFX started using many years before the self-powered UPA-1P became available. The versatility of the UPA-1A insures that those conventionally-powered legacy speakers not only remain in AVFX's inventory, but continue to see constant use.

As AVFX continues to grow, the firm's Meyer Sound inventory ha

Details
UK - London PA and Promotion company, Up All Night Music, employed its new Allen & Heath GL3800 live sound console at the recent Reading Festival. The mixer was installed in the Tiscali VIP tent, which hosted exclusive sessions from a variety of the artists performing on the main stages over the weekend.

The 32-channel mixer managed 20 bands over the three days, providing live sound reinforcement for acts such as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Graham Coxon, The Rakes, The Subways, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Futureheads, Funeral For a Friend, and Mondo Generator. The select 100-capacity audience even included some big names such as Dave Grohl and Pete Doherty, who came to see their celebrity associates perform.

"The GL3800 performed flawlessly - it's a fantastic desk," commented sound engineer, Ed Shackleton. "I particularly love the new EQ, which has a great range

Details
UK - Shortly before the official UK launch of the ADB Warp/M at PLASA 2005, Glyndebourne Opera House in East Sussex, England became the first British venue to acquire the new luminaire. An advance consignment of the Motorised Warp was built and installed in time for the legendary opera house's summer season.

Glyndebourne's lighting manager, Keith 'KB' Benson, organized a head-to-head 'luminaire shootout' when the venue's management decided to make its first long-term investment in automated lighting. He explains: "We've used generics for years because I never felt that the moving light for opera was there, although we have tried a few - we used a couple of 2K PCs for a few years and they performed pretty well. But we have never really gone for anything else; I am not so keen, personally, on colour mixing, as it can be difficult to get a really pure specific colour. But usin

Details
Norway - Now in its 51st year, the annual St Olav Festival in Norway is held to mark the historic battle of Stiklestad in 1030, which marked the country's transition from paganism to Christianity and established the cult of St Olav after the slain king. Central to the festival is the St Olav Drama, performed in an outdoor amphitheatre at the Stiklestad National Cultural Center before an audience of 6,000, with over 20,000 people watching the drama over four performances. For the first time this year, the sound was handled by local PA rental company Stiklestad Lyd & Lys (SLL) who chose to use a large quantity of DPA microphones for the performers and musicians.

The St Olav Drama, which unfolds in the last 24 hours before the battle, revealing the transition between paganism and Christianity, is the largest and oldest open-air play held in the Nordic countries, encompassing elemen

Details
UK - Entertainment lighting supplier White Light will be at the PLASA Show once again this year, showing new products from many of the companies for which it is the exclusive UK distributor as well as its own Digital Festoon System, a winner of a PLASA Award For Innovation at last year's show.

In order to demonstrate its full potential, the Digital Festoon System - a radical re-think of conventional festoon lighting that allows each lamp along a festoon's length to be individually dimmed without the aid of external dimmers - will be put through its paces in a two square metre demonstration rig featuring a 27 x 27 square grid of bulbs - 729 in total. The arrangement will show some of the many dramatic possibilities offered by what, at first glance, appears to be just a collection of light bulbs.

Alongside DFS, White Light will be showing the new White Light/ETC Smart Touring Ra

Details
Sweden - Based at Krylbo, near Avesta, about 160km north-west of Stockholm, Starlight is one of Sweden's leading providers of full-service touring production, a position boosted by its merger with the Stockholm-based VLSC AB (formerly VLPS Scandinavia) in 2003. Today, the yellow trucks and tour buses of the company's growing transport fleet are a regular sight on Sweden's roads in summer.

CEO Per Eriksson first began DJ'ing in 1974 at the age of 14, and started Starlight Disco in 1980. With a bus, a lighting rig and a Cerwin Vega sound system, he found regular work providing lights and sound to events staged in Sweden's 'People's Parks' - something of a national institution in the 1980s.

It was during this period that Eriksson first encountered Ulf Brynte. The pair worked together in 1989-1990, when Brynte rented Eriksson's van, some equipment and an employee to help service a

Details
UK - The Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London, has commissioned a new sound and projection infrastructure from Marquee Audio. Used for a variety of events, the Hall is now fully equipped for concert reinforcement.

In the Great Hall itself, Marquee has installed a central cluster of Meyer M1D self-powered loudspeakers. Marquee offered two alternative PA designs, explaining the pros and cons of each. "We took a view based on the inadequacies of the old system, which had been systematically adapted over a number of years," says venue manager Michael Sharp. "Particularly poor had been the facilities for the hard-of-hearing. The induction loop was subject to a lot of interference - and we were recommended a Sennheiser infra-red system."

Marquee's project manager, Scott Wakelin, needed to provide evenly-distributed coverage for a hall with a ground floor

Details
USA - Eminem's lighting director Benny Kirkham used 60 James Thomas PixelLine LED batten fixtures for the artist's recently concluded high profile Anger Management Tour. It played arenas and amphitheatres throughout North America.

Lighting designer Dan Boland specified the PixelLines, then programmed and directed for the road by Kirkham. Ed and Ted's Excellent Lighting of Oxnard California supplied the gear plus much of the tour's rigging, with 10 Vario motors overhead provided by Show Distribution of Quebec City, Canada.

Boland used 37 Pixelline 1044s on the ground in DMX mode, broken down into 666 separate "cells" of control. The 1044s lined the entire downstage edge, fully outlining three 16 x 4ft stage thrusts.

Overhead, there were 22 of JTE's latest 110ec PixelLines, which were broken down into five cells apiece, giving a total of 110 "cells"

Details
UK - Denon DJ has confirmed a high-profile DJ line-up which will add an extra to buzz to DJ Sunday at the PLASA Show this year. The company has confirmed that the 'experimental' DJ Jonathan Lisle from MTheory Records and John Digweed's Bedrock organization, will be demoing on the stand (after taking part in one of the seminars - see here for full programme) at 2.30pm. Lisle will be using the DN-S5000 table top CD players, which he used on the Bedrock label's OS:02 original series CD mix album launched earlier this year, as well as the new DN-S3500, which Denon say everyone's shouting about on the forums right now. Joining Lisle will be the guys from online radio station www.cheekyhalf.net, as well as the Angels of Dex, who have their launch party at Turnmills (alongside Eddi

Details
UK - In order to make full use of your days at the PLASA show, the show's organizers are encouraging visitors to 'check in' early. The doors to the exhibition will be open from 9am every morning and you will be invited to go up to the Top Deck to collect your show catalogue, and have a cup of coffee at one of the outlets around the PLASA stand while planning you day, prior to the show's official opening at 10am.

Please note: due to the current security situation, there will be full bag checks as you enter the show and all visitors are being asked for their co-operation. In the meantime, to help you plan, don't forget to check out the show website - see address below - for all the up-to-date news in the final run-up to the show.

Page 1814 of 3465

Latest Issue. . .