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China - The new Guangzhou Opera House - one of the three largest performance venues in China - opened in May, with ETC entertainment and architectural lighting systems in control.

The permanent ETC equipment has now helped light one of the most prestigious platforms for the nation's top talent, the 9th China Arts Festival, for which Guangzhou was the headlining venue.

When the £130m (€155m) facilities debuted in May, the lighting control was from two ETC Eos control desks; Eos Client software (for remote console programming); and multiple ETC Net3 Gateways for full ACN networked functionality.

ETC's Eos product manager Anne Valentino says,"The Eos control system has rapidly established itself as the leading control choice for opera, theatre and ballet instit

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China - The Danish Pavilion at World Expo 2010 in Shanghai is a cutting edge and technically complex installation, as well as one of the most popular of the 200+ country pavilions. Every aspect of the installation is not only professional but highly innovative, including the Martin lighting control solution.

Lighting control is handled by two separate artnet systems, one for the LED facade and one for the rest of the Pavilion's lighting. The LED facade is controlled via a project-built media server developed by Aarhus University's Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI, Denmark). The CAVI media server controls the look of the facade by triggering timings using sensors mounted around the building.

The non-facade lighting areas are quite substantial however. There are 25 other areas of the Danish Pavilion which are illuminated and controlled individually - a soc

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UK - Blades are once more swishing across the ice as one of London's well-known leisure hotspots, the Sobell Centre in Islington, reopens its skating rink after a £550,000 refurbishment.

Islington Council and Aquaterra, which runs the borough's leisure centres, were forced to shut down the rink to update the coolant gas supply in accordance with the latest environmental regulations. As well as upgrading the pipes, they decided to improve the rink - adding new netting to prevent ice-hockey pucks from flying into the spectators' area.

The refurbishment provided an opportunity to install a high-spec sound system, which was designed by VME, the Manchester-based audio services company. VME chose the distinctively-moulded Do Series loudspeakers from Vieta as the main elements of the installation.

"As you can guess, there is a lot of reverb in this environment," say

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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 - Production Services Ireland (PSI) supplied moving lights, LED surfaces, rigging and crew for the BBC Northern Ireland Proms In The Park event, staged in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle, an impressive 18th century mansion and the official residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

It was the first year that PSI has supplied a full rigging and comprehensive lighting and digital lighting package to the event, which was co-ordinated with BBC Northern Ireland's own lighting department, to meet the spec of lighting designers John Gallagher and Philip Brines. The Ulster Orchestra played a special programme and guests included The Priests, flautist Brian Finnegan, violinist Alexandra Soumm and Duke Special.

The stage was supplied by Star Events. It measured 18m wide by 13 deep with 8.5m of headroom, underneath which PSI installed a 16mwide by 13 deep box truss.

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Spain - Loudspeaker manufacturer dBTechnologies reports that the K300 has been chosen by hearing health specialists, GAES to form part of the precision hearing test, which is carried out at its many hearing centres around Spain.

Each of the GAES medical centres will be equipped with two K300 loudspeakers, with a view to rolling out the use of the dBTechnologies boxes across the world. "As new clinics are opened and older speakers need to renewed, the K300 is proving to be ideal for us," says Carles González Soto, electro sales manager at GAES. "These speakers are great quality, whilst being small enough to fit in the clinics."

The K-300 is an ultra compact, two-way active speaker, featuring a digipro bi-amped digital power amp to deliver high performance and sound pressure levels. The K300 is used in 'free field' hearing tests, which are run by GAES profes

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UK - Mortons private members club in Mayfair's Berkeley Square, has undergone a major refurbishment to each of the four floors in this Georgian town house.

This includes a new sound system designed over eight separate zones and a club lighting system in the newly-created Night Lounge located in the basement area. All spaces have been conceived, installed and supplied by The Sound Division Group (SDG).

When proprietor Marlon Abela reopened the venue towards the end of last year, there was just one piece of the jigsaw remaining. For while the ground floor bar, first floor restaurant and second floor private members' lounge had received their first major overhaul in many years, it was only after the owners decided to convert the basement into an exclusive nightclub - termed a 'night lounge' - that the real 'wow factor' was delivered.

With its colour-washed, exposed brickwork, d

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UK - Students at the Guildford School of Acting (GSA) staged West Side Story at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, for their Graduation Show. The lighting team opted for PixelLine 110s from PixelRange.

The lighting design team comprised seven students, taking their lead from designer Richard G Jones, recently applauded for his work on The Railway Childrenat London's Waterloo station. The brief was to recreate the emotional journey of The Story with lighting as the sole scenic element.

Second-year student and assistant lighting designer for the production, Natalie Davey, specified the PixelLine 110s to work in conjunction with conventional cyc floods already in the school inventory. The 110s were positioned on side booms to wash across the white cycloramic scenery wall where the cyc floods also washed from their positions top and bottom.

Davey approach

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Macau - Franco Dragone's newest spectacular has been five years in the planning, two years of rehearsal and cost approximately £160m. Surrounded in mystery and much anticipation, The House of Dancing Water launched on 16 September in Macau's City of Dreams.

The Dancing Water Theatre was designed by Pei Partnership and is a 270-degree theatre-in-the-round, with a central stage diameter of about 20m. The theatre houses around 260 automated fountains that spurt water up to 18m in the air, and a total of 11 hydraulic stage lifts and vomitory lifts that enable an artistic flow in performance from aquatic to conventional stage.

Contracted by Theatre Projects, Stage Technologies provided a 141-axis whole house control and engineering system for the purpose-built venue. The system includes a 40-unit track and trolley system, which can transport up to 250kg at 3.5m/sec, allowing

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USA - When Arcade Fire launched their new album The Suburbs and then the accompanying tour, they had a clear vision of how the album and tour should work together.To oversee the vision for their lighting design, Arcade Fire enlisted the assistance of designer Susanne Sasic who in turn brought in 40 VLX Wash luminaires, provided by Solotech and Upstaging.

"Once I was brought on by the band's manager, we began discussing the new album and how they wanted to integrate aspects of the album into the tour," says Sasic. "The overall feel of the album is a sort of journey into their childhood through the looking glass of a faded Polaroid, so this is what they wanted for the tour. The set design would consist of a suburban, outdoor location with a large projection video screen contained inside a road-side billboard frame measuring 20' wide x 10' high. Then we also a

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UK - GDS has announced that Dave Harris has joined the company as design engineer. Harris has worked in the entertainment industry for over 15 years and brings with him a wide range of skills in manufacture and design along with years of experience of working on special projects.

His work has included the design, build and installation of fully autonomous searchlights which form part of the festive lighting at the top of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. He has also created a number of bespoke products for bands including Muse, Tokyo Hotel and Coldplay.

Richard Cuthbert, technical director for GDS comments, "David brings with him considerable experience in special project and product design and we are very much looking forward to his input for the ongoing expansion of the GDS."

(Jim Evans)

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Denmark - Christian Poulsen has joined DPA microphones as CEO and shareholder.

Poulsen, a member of DPA Microphones' board of directors for the last four years, has also been working as an external consultant at DPA for the last 10 months. According to chairman of the board Erik Holst, he has built up valuable knowledge of the company during this time.

A graduate of the Danish Engineering Academy, 49-year-old Poulsen founded digital camera and scanner company Imacon in 1995. Imacon became the fastest growing industrial company in Denmark in 1999 and 2000, merging in 2004 with Hasselblad to transform the Swedish photography giant from high end film camera company to a fully digital camera operation. Poulsen drove this process as CEO at Hasselblad until end of 2009.

"I look forward to the challenges and possibilities that DPA faces in the global marketplace over the comin

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USA - Harman Professional has named Graham Hammell as director of its core research and development team, the System Development and Integration Group (SDIG). The announcement comes as SDIG's mandate is broadened to address more Harman Professional product families and also a greater number of application markets. According to Rob Urry, VP and GM, Harman Professional Signal Processing Group, who made the announcement, Graham Hammell's experience will be an essential guiding force in delivering the appropriate feature-sets for the respective applications.

"SDIG has developed HiQnet, System Architect and our internal AVB programme to such a point that we now have extremely strong, scalable core technologies that we are beginning to deploy in a whole host of markets and applications," Urry said yesterday. "Market experience, product design and integration experience

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UAE - The most prominent exhibit at the recent Cityscape exhibition in Abu Dhabi was a vast model of the government Urban Planning Council's vision for the capital of the United Arab Emirates in the year 2030.

Although it measured a substantial 22m x 18m, its size was not its only remarkable feature. The model formed the centre-piece of a multimedia presentation, launching the master plan for the city as it expands over the next two decades.

An 11m screen carried a short movie running on three edge-blended projectors, with sound tracks in English and Arabic. Simultaneously, a grid of 16 ceiling-mounted projectors brought the model to life. The synchronised show highlighted areas featured in the movie, animated the transport links, and used moving graphics to create an absorbing and exciting multimedia experience.

The technology, designed and installed by London visual

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Denmark - The Performing Arts Centre (Musikhuset) in Esbjerg, a harbour city on the rugged west coast of Denmark, hosts many diverse cultural activities ranging from rock concerts to theatre, ballet and opera. Attracting 150.000 visitors a year, the centre has always been hampered by the fact that it lacked a medium sized venue for theatre. Esbjerg Musikhuset won the right to build a new modern theatre, capable of seating 500 guests, designed by architects Jan Utzon and his father J°rn Utzon, famous for his design of Sydney's Opera House.

"Choosing an appropriate PA system was more difficult than first envisioned", says Paul van Zijl, in-house sound technician. Together with facility manager Christian S°vad they took from Utzon's design philosophy, and placed people in the centre of that decision. "Many modern theatres today have big line array systems, fl

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Canada - In June of this year, production company Out of the Box Productions, was presented with a unique opportunity. William J Mackwood, lighting designer at the Department of Dance at York University, Toronto reports, "In 2004, we had originally produced our show Opera Erotique at the Events Centre, a nightclub in Victoria, lit entirely with conventional instruments. When we talked about remounting the show at the Tranzac Club in Toronto, we decided to conduct a comparative study by lighting the entire production with LED instruments - not just washes, but acting areas as well.

"Through the generosity of J.F. Canuel, VP of A.C. Lighting, we were offered a complete LED lighting rig for the show - whatever I requested was made available to us - including the new Color Block 2. These fixtures, with their GBA optics, 530 lumens of output and theatrical grade dimm

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USA - Barco/High End Systems is now shipping the intellaspot XT-1 full-featured hard-edged moving yoke light.

The intellaspot XT-1 features a powerful optical system, producing an extreme 20,000 lumens output from the 850w HID lamp, while also providing clear projections with a large zoom range of 11°- 55°. It features a fast mechanical iris, variable soft edge, and electronic strobing, in addition to smooth CMY colour mixing and variable CTO. A fixed color wheel allows instant colour choices via easily exchangeable dichroic filters.

Built on an entirely new platform, the intellaspot XT-1 is an energy-efficient fixture that conforms to modern "greening" principles, says the company. A battery-controlled full colour LCD menu system enables fixture addressing without having to power up the unit. Low ambient noise, Remote Device Management (RDM), Art-Net, and wi

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UK - The Bose FreeSpace DS 40F and DS 40SE loudspeakers are the newest additions to the FreeSpace DS loudspeaker family, expanding the line to now offer three distinct levels of audio performance between the DS 16, DS 40 and DS 100 loudspeaker models.

The FreeSpace DS 40F and DS 40SE are high-fidelity loudspeakers that deliver background and foreground music with fullness, notable presence and detail as well as clear, natural-sounding speech reproduction, says the company. These 40-watt loudspeakers utilise a core Bose technology - a single 4.5" (114mm) full-range HVC (Helical Voice Coil) driver. The DS 40F flush-mount and DS 40SE surface-mount loudspeakers can be installed at heights up to 26ft (8m). They easily integrate into sound systems - indoors and outside - with flexible mounting hardware, optional installation accessories and contemporary styling.

A newly expande

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USA - Martin Professional's M1 lighting console has snared the spotlight for a few special events, but now it's on the road, making its North American touring debut on The Black Crowes' current run.

A visit with Matthias Hinrichs at Martin's Los Angeles office helped LD/Programmer Jason Dill focus in on the Martin M1 for its many solution-solving features in a powerful, compact package.

Dill needed no special training on the M1 but a brief run-through from Hinrichs. "Everything made sense. It's easy to get around," Dill says. "Programming lighting is just a matter of controlling DMX channels, so it's a matter of knowing what keys you need to push to get the console to do what you want. The M1's syntax is logical, as opposed to other consoles that take a computer-minded approach to operate them."

With the ever-changing lighting rig to consider, console fle

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Finland - ARX's MSX 32 active microphone splitters feature prominently in the new audio system installed into the Helsinki Cathedral.

Helsinki's most prominent landmark and Finland's most important Lutheran building the Church of St Nicholas (Suurkirkko) is located in the centre of the city. Seating 1300 people the neoclassical building was completed in 1852 and is a popular tourist attraction.

Starlike Oy, ARX's Finnish distributor installed a six-channel Sennheiser wireless mic system and Clockaudio wired Mic's which feed two units of ARX MSX 32 active mic splitters.

From the MSX 32s, audio is split to multiple Audia DSPs from Biamp Systems which provide signal processing for multiple Renkus-Heinz Iconyx digitally steerable column loudspeakers.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - Bandit Lites going green might have taken many more years had it not been for Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills and Nash. In mid 2008, Bandit San Francisco general manager Dizzy Gosnell became engaged with long-time Jackson Browne production manager Dennis Scrimo, lighting designer David Davidian, and managers extraordinaire Cree and Buddha Miller. The question was put to Diz, 'How can we go green this year?', and that set Bandit to thinking.

The only solutions available at that time were either very expensive or very low quality. Bandit immediately set out to test a large number of various devices to determine the best, affordable option. That summer Jackson willingly served as a proving ground for various types of LED solutions. There were several immediate upsides to an all LED rig; low power consumption, endless and vivid colour varieties, and the point most impressive

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UK - Following on from the first Hippotizer open day staged by A.C. Entertainment Technologies video division, the exclusive UK & Ireland distributor for Green Hippo products has announced a further rollout of regional open days starting later this year. Dates will be confirmed shortly.

Held in conjunction with Green Hippo at AC-ET's Northern sales office in Leeds, technical staff from both companies were on hand to demonstrate the full functionality of the Hippotizer.

The open day also showcased other new products in A.C. Video's extensive portfolio of leading brands, including the innovative Pufferfish PufferSphere high impact display system featuring a 360° spherical viewing window and the Christie Projection line-up including the latest in the popular M-Series range.

(Jim Evans)

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