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UK - A former undergraduate IT lab at the University of Salford has made way for the world's most flexible immersive reality environment. Known as the Octave, the octagonal projection space can be reconfigured to many types of industrially familiar systems to assess best fit for emerging applications, and features a revolutionary video capture system which the group hope will lead the field in tele-immersion.

The mission to move virtual reality into a realm above the standard TelePresence and Access Grid videoconferencing has been led by Professor David Roberts, scientific director of the Centre for Virtual Environments at the University of Salford.

The £1.6m project has a number of stakeholders including Electrosonic, who successfully tendered for the integration. For the

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UK - The 2008 Kylie X tour once again saw The Rigging Partnership provide the Automation effects for this show. TRP has previously provided flying effects on both the Kylie ShowGirl and Homecoming tours.

TRP were commissioned by the Kylie tour management to provide all the flying effects for the show which sees three different sections of performer flying and a six-screen LED back wall. TRP provided a 14 winch system to automate all the moving pieces which was specifically designed for this high demanding European tour.

Kylie herself flies in twice during the show, the automated screens parting to reveal her descending onto the stage on huge flying set pieces. With a complex rig of both static and tracking systems the whole solution completed a mammoth 33 venues in just over 3 months.

Gavin Weatherall, director of The Rigging Partnership comments: "

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Vietnam - Eighty contestants competed this year at the Diamond Bay Resort's Crown Convention Center in the 57th Miss Universe beauty pageant. Broadcast globally on NBC, the event was the first major U.S.-based television production originating in Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

Bringing audio to the event proved to be a logistical challenge managed adroitly by Red Hook, NY-based Firehouse Productions which assembled the components needed for an entire PA in the US and then shipped them to Vietnam. Purchased outright for permanent installation by the convention centre, the system included a microphone package delivered directly from Shure Incorporated's world headquarters in Niles, Illinois.

(Jim Evans)

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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 - A.C. Lighting Ltd has announced that it is changing its name to A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd from 1 September 2008, to reflect the company's increasing range of industry products and services.

No longer just a leading provider of professional lighting equipment to over 80 countries worldwide, in recent years A.C. has extended its vast technology stockholding in response to customers' demand for a single supplier who can meet all their production and project needs.

The name A.C. Entertainment Technologies therefore marks a new era for the company, and encapsulates the wide range of products, accessories, consumables and related services available through A.C.'s dedicated Lighting, Rigging, Audio and Video divisions.

In addition, A.C.'s related services include in-house cable and scrolls manufacturing to order, product training, servicing and after-sales support. S

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UK - Black Cat Music will be presenting a comprehensive range of music and performance equipment for theatre, performance, music, and acoustic treatments at PLASA08.

Theatre products include tiered audience seating, pit filler staging, make-up stations, costume racks and stage boxes. The performance equipment range embraces staging, orchestral chairs, choral risers, seated risers and conductors' equipment. Some of the music products on show will be from the Black Cat range of music stands and lights, posture chairs, instrument and sheet music storage, choral folders and piano accessories.

Black Cat Acoustics can offer a range of noise control treatments, acoustic shells such as Diva, as well as virtual acoustic environments and music practice rooms.

Black Cat Music is the exclusive representative of Wenger Corporation in the UK and Europe. European visitors to PLASA interest

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UK - Soundcraft will make one of the PLASA Show's high-profile product introductions with its latest digital mixing console, the Si3.

This new desk is designed for live use on both touring sound systems and in fixed installations and boasts intuitive operation and high input and bus count makes it a perfect choice for House of Worship sound systems. Theatre users will also find the Soundcraft Si3 very applicable in their area.

The Si3 comes in one chassis - console surface, all input and output connections, power supply - so it can literally drop in and replace an existing analogue desk as almost certainly no additional cabling would be required to install it. This compact footprint desk can directly handle 64 mono inputs, 4 stereo inputs and has full connectivity for all 35 output busses (24 Aux/Group, 8 Matrix and Left/Right/Centre mix buses), and also boasts four Lexicon ef

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China - Bose played a pivotal role in ensuring that clear, intelligible sound was delivered at five of the 12 newly-built Olympic venues, including the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing. Using Bose Modeler software, Bose engineers created acoustical models, designed sound systems and predicted their acoustic performance.

The Bose Auditioner system enabled everyone to hear how the proposed systems would sound before they were installed, and to evaluate each system to ensure it was the right one for the project. After the installations were completed, Bose used their advanced STI measurement tool to verify the actual system performance.

The Panaray LT family of loudspeakers were chosen for the large venues because they deliver extremely tight pattern control in the mid and high frequencies. This makes them well-suited for use in multiple loudspeaker arrays, long throw distances

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UK - Hawthorn has recently appointed Suzanne Allis as its new business development manager for London and the South. Allis will be responsible for developing new business and client liaison.

Allis trained as a theatre designer at Wimbledon School of Art and has been working in the events industry for the last 10 years using her creativity in design and experience of production management to deliver many successful events.

Commenting on her appointment, Allis said: "Having used Hawthorn as a partner and supplier on many of my major projects to date I was delighted to accept their offer. I am in a unique position of being able to confidently explain and recommend their services, as they never let me down when I was the customer."

(Jim Evans)

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UK - The Hoosiers are playing an extensive array of festivals this summer and their front of house sound engineer Trevor Gilligan is taking his Yamaha LS9 console along to every show. Festival dates include the Isle Of Wight, Glastonbury, T In The Park and V2008 in the UK, Summersonic in Japan, Lowlands in the Netherlands and Gampel Das Festivalgelände in Switzerland.

"Although I've been mixing for 25 years, I'm a relatively recent convert to digital," says Gilligan. "When I first started working with the Hoosiers, I had been using a DiGiCo D5, but for some dates (rental company) Britannia Row didn't have one available. So to save them sub-hiring one in I took a Yamaha M7CL out instead.

"A hard and fast rule I have is that I shouldn't be mixing my band on a console I don't know,' he continues. "You don't know what's going to be available at a festival

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Reggae News - A statue of late reggae legend Bob Marley has been unveiled in a small Serbian village during a rock festival as a token of peace in the Balkans. Musicians from Croatia and Serbia were joined by rock fans for the midnight ceremony in Banatski Sokolac.

Organisers said Marley, who died in 1981, "promoted peace and tolerance in his music". Serbia recently erected a statue of iconic film character Rocky, while Mostar in Bosnia has one of Bruce Lee. Another Serbian village put up a statue to actor Johnny Weissmuller, best known for his depiction of Tarzan. Serbian musician Jovan Matic and veteran Croatian rock star Dado Topic took the covers off the Marley statue at the Rock Village event.

Festival News - A huge blaze at the Reading Festival which spread to 19 vehicles in a car park was started accidently with a barbecue, police have revealed. The fire was under co

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UK - For the 21st consecutive year, Pearce Hire provided all the lighting and power at the 44th annual Cambridge Folk Festival. This year for the first time, festival organisers and key suppliers worked with Julie's Bicycle to find ways to reduce the carbon impact of the festival.

The four day festival featured live musical performances and entertainment to an audience of 10,000 people. Pearce Hire supplied all site power and lighting for bars, food stalls and tower lights for the car parks and campsites. A pair of synchronised generators powered the main stage and the broadcast compound.

An array of Pearce Hire's moving and generic lighting all controlled with Avolites Pearl Desks and ART 2000 dimmers help set the scene across three stages, reflecting the variety of acts performing.

Julie's Bicycle is a not for profit company that helps events to reduce the UK music industr

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China - Philips Entertainment Lighting contributed to the Olympics' spectacles as the lamp supplier of 220 PR Lighting fixtures.

Roger Van den Plas, segment manager Philips Entertainment Lighting, says: "We are proud that PR Lighting has chosen us as their preferred supplier for the biggest event of the year. In the presence of milliards of people we have demonstrated the innovative Philips lamps that resulted in a state of the art light show."Philips will also contribute to the Beijing 2008 Paralympics later this year.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - The Broadway show All My Sons will preview 18 September using three Hippotizer HD V3 media servers. New City Video of New York is supplying the Hippotizers and other video equipment for the production.

Since 1999 New City Video has provided audio/visual support for stage and corporate events. A select list includes the original projection package for the Blue Man Group at the Luxor in Las Vegas, Tom Stoppard's play Invention of Love, and composer Steve Reich's world tours, along with numerous events for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and many others. "Hippotizer is the premier product for our applications," says New City Video owner Jack Young. "I wouldn't trust a show with any other media server."

All My Sons associate video designer, Brian Beasely, says: "Based on previous experience, video designer Finn Ross and I knew that

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USA - GE, a worldwide partner of the Olympic Games has announced it has exceeded its sales goal for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, winning 400 infrastructure projects in and around Beijing that will generate $700 million in revenues. NBC Universal has also generated a record of more than $1 billion in advertising revenues, making the Beijing Games the most successful Games in GE's history. NBC Universal's Beijing Olympics coverage is on pace to be the most watched Olympics in history.

GE, which has been providing technology to support the Olympic Games and other major sporting events for more than 70 years, managed projects in all 37 official Beijing Games competition venues and 168 commercial buildings in and around Beijing.

"GE is uniquely positioned to deliver a variety of critical technology solutions for Olympic host cities," said Jeff Immelt, chairman & CEO, G

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UK - Ambient Lighting Ltd - a specialist in the architectural, colour changing and effect lighting markets - distributes a carefully chosen selection of quality lighting products. This year at PLASA08, Ambient will be showing exclusively the new AVR Ledion Osiris high-power LED range, manufactured in England. This is a growing range, all IP-rated for exterior or interior use, and many of the items will receive their show debut at PLASA. Ambient believes that the compactness of the fittings combined with the powerful output will make this range very attractive to the rental market as well as to the company's regular customer base.

(Lee Baldock)

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UK - Renkus-Heinz introduces IC Live at PLASA 08. "Originally designed for permanent installation, Iconyx arrays have been used for charity galas, corporate presentations and concerts throughout Europe and the US," says Renkus-Heinz president Harro Heinz. "IC Live meets the needs of PA rental companies, with high output steerable array configurations and a versatile hardware system that is optimized for portable applications."

The company will also launch Iconyx R, the new version of the successful Iconyx Digitally Beam Steerable installation line, with purpose-designed coaxial transducers, RHAON (Renkus-Heinz Audio Operations Network) technology and a slimmer, lighter weight enclosure.

IC Live is engineered to supply natural, musical and intelligible sound for live events from meetings with background music to high-energy theatrical productions and concert

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UK - HSL is supplying lighting equipment for all the C venues theatres at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This involves six venues and a total of 20 different performance spaces including the Urban Garden, a new outdoor area adjacent to the main C venues hub on Chambers Street. With over 170 shows from 150 companies, this is the largest programme of theatre on the Fringe

HSL has been involved with supplying C venues for several years. Project manager Mike Oates says: "It's great to support the vibrancy, energy and enthusiasm of new theatre, and Edinburgh is a world showcase for some of the best and most innovative future comedy, dance, theatre and musicals."

Lighting for C venues is being co-ordinated by production manager Gareth Edwards and head of technical/chief LX Andrew Grant. Lighting designs for all the different spaces have been created over the years by

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Italy - Not only is 2008 the year of Giacomo Puccini's 150th anniversary celebrations, it is also the 54th year of the Puccini Festival. And the festival now boasts a new open-air stage lit with help from ETC on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli in the composer's birthplace of Torre Del Lago, northern Italy.

As well as lighting the opening concert by La Scala Philhamonic Orchestra and Chorus and a tribute to Puccini by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, an ETC Congo jr control desk - with a second as backup - was used for Turandot, Tosca, Madam Butterfly and one the composer's lesser known operas, Edgar, which featured a set design by UK artist Roger Dean and costumes designed by his daughter Freyja.

For board operator Federico Canibus, this was the first time he'd used an ETC desk. He says: "After getting into the 'mentality' of the desk's operatio

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UK - Wireless Solution Sweden will launch the W-DMX BlackBox S-2000 during PLASA 08. In addition to new gear, there will also be a draw for free W-DMX products plus "many more surprises."

The W-DMX BlackBox S-2000 is a 19" 1U Rack unit that is prepared for ACN Lite, ETC-NET and Strand ShowNET. This is billed as the world's first double universe transmitter that supports both RDM and Art-Net. BlackBox S-2000 is stackable for up to 32 DMX Universes and supports the W-DMX Co-Existence technology with plug-and-play ease.

With full RDM compatibility, the W-DMX BlackBox S-2000 supports remote addressing for up to 512 fixtures in both Point-2-Point mode in daisy chain by cable and in Point-2-Multi-Point mode. This translates to major time savings in big rental productions.

Wireless Solution will also be holding Wireless University during PLASA on Tuesday, 9 September

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