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UK - Cliff Richard, the perennial performer, celebrated his 70th birthday with a series of well-publicised; sell out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. If proof were required of Cliff's showmanship, he chose to feature an LED video floor as a focal point on the stage, adding a contemporary twist to his Bold As Brass swing / jazz theme. The video floor was supplied by UK equipment hire specialist Themes Incorporated, who were on hand throughout rehearsals and during the concerts to ensure the smooth delivery of custom graphics supplied by Cliff's production team.

The Sunday night concert was filmed and the 'Bold As Brass' DVD will be available from 22nd November 2010.

(Claire Beeson)

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Spain - Aena, the Spanish state-owned company that manages all of Spain's airports, recently celebrated the opening of its new Terminal One building at Barcelona Airport. The new terminal is a massive space covering 544,066sq.m and boasts 168 check-in counters, 50 jetways and 15 baggage carousels as well as a vast retail area.

A major part of the project was the PA system. Aena called upon Lexon SA, one of the largest professional audio, lighting distribution and systems engineering companies in Spain, to design, supply and install the entire public address and digital audio control system throughout the new building. The installation is similar to the one Lexon completed in T4 of Madrid's Barajas Airport.

The system installed in Barcelona Airport's T1 is based on a MediaMatrix system and a total of 314 Crest CKi power amplifiers, each equipped with a CobraNet module that enab

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Arts Funding Update - The way the arts are financed in England is to be transformed with the introduction of an applications system from the main public funding body. Arts Council England, which distributes cash to about 850 groups, wants to make recipients more accountable and open up the process to new organisations. More than 100 organisations are likely to lose their funding.

The council's current annual grant of £449m is dropping to £349m by 2014 as a result of the Spending Review. Arts funding bodies in the rest of the UK are developing their own plans. Arts Council England hands out government funding to venues across the country from local companies to the Royal Opera House. Until now the body says there has been no process under which organisations could apply for funding.

Under the plans, all existing organisations are able to apply and new organisations

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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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China - With a total project value of $83m, the Australian Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010 marked the country's largest ever commitment to a World Expo. By the time the Exposition closed on 31 October 2010 over 8m visitors had been through the Pavilion.

Under the design direction of think!OTS (TOTS) the creative team was tasked with conceiving a unique thematic infrastructure combining dynamic design with natural imagery. In collaboration with TOTS, Wood Marsh provided the architectural services that led to a unique shape, which was then constructed by TOTS' partner in the project, Bovis Lend Lease.

In planning the technical production TOTS contracted Paul van der Ent from Wizard Projects in Australia to be the executive technical director - both companies having been previously involved with a number of pavilions at expos for the Australian Government.

Wizard, having suc

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UK/USA - In preparation for their merger on 1 January 2011, PLASA and ESTA have just completed month-long elections for positions on the European and North American Regional Boards and the over-arching Governing Body.

The elections usher in a new Governance structure for both Associations as they unite under the PLASA name: the two Regional Boards will be responsible for overseeing day-to-day affairs in their respective regions, while the Governing Body will take a high level strategic role, acting in the best interests of the membership worldwide.

During the transition period into the new structure, every effort was made to allow current members of PLASA's Executive Committee and ESTA's Board of Directors to serve out their full terms of office.

As a consequence, seven positions were up for election on the new European Regional Board. Matt Lloyd of Global Design Solutions b

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UK - After 147 years of entertaining audiences - give or take the odd break - Kilmarnock's Palace Theatre complex has recently installed a new audio system for live events based around a Yamaha M7CL48-ES console and SB168-ES stage boxes was the perfect fit.

Originally opened in 1863 as the town's Corn Exchange, the Palace Theatre was joined by the Grand Agricultural Hall 64 years later. Despite an occasionally chequered career, the venues are still going strong today.

With audience capacities of 500 and 1300 respectively, these days the Palace Theatre and Grand Hall form a multi-purpose complex. However, attracting touring acts to the Grand Hall was starting to becoming a problem, as it had no in-house PA system.

"We had started to do a number of higher profile gigs in the Grand Hall, but a major obstacle to promoters was the cost of hiring in audio and lighting systems

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Canada - Musicians and audio crew members on Michael Bublé's Crazy Love tour are singing the praises of Aviom's Personal Mixers. Used as part of the monitoring setup for the brass section, the personal mixers offer crew members the ease of configuration they require while providing musicians with a customised monitor mix.

With stops across the globe in a variety of different venues and Bublé performing along with a big band, the Crazy Love tour poses some audio challenges. The brass players have the most cues of all the musicians on the tour, making proper monitoring critical to the performance.

"Ease of setup and tear down were key factors when selecting gear for the tour," says Louis-Philippe Maziade, projects manager, sound department for Solotech, the Canadian production company handling the equipment and crew for the tour. "The A

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UK - Working with audio visual supplier, Blitz Communications, Le Mark was tasked with the job of manufacturing a range of heavy duty road case labels which would help increase health & safety by identifying the individual case weights of Blitz's considerable stock of audio visual equipment.

"Customer care and health & safety are paramount at Blitz. We needed a label that would help anyone handling the equipment to visually identify if the case was safe to manually lift or would require assistance. Most importantly of all, the label shouldn't come off without a fight!" says David Watchorn of Blitz.

"All road cases get a rough ride in this industry, so any label that is capable of withstanding the constant transportation and industry standard 'rough handling' needed to be something special. We've used Le Mark's PAL road case labels for many years and know from ex

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UK - Children at 10 new schools in South Lanarkshire are now able to put on theatre and music productions following work by Black Light's installation team.

"This project has been going on over the past 18 months and we have another three or four schools to do over the next year," says Black Light's installations project manager, Paul McGreal. "We secured the contract because we are cost-competitive and also because we are a trusted supplier to schools up and down the country."

The project involved Black Light working with a number of building service contractors, including NG Bailey and Spie Matthew Hall, as well as with South Lanarkshire Council. Black Light was asked to design and install theatre systems in assembly halls and games halls and to deliver a training package for teachers and janitorial staff.

All the systems Black Light installed were desi

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UK - The Welsh weather may have thrown its worst at proceedings, but spirits at The Ryder Cup 2010 were certainly not dampened, with Colin Montgomerie's Team Europe swinging their way to victory on the greens and fairways of The Celtic Manor's course. Providing support to the tournament, audiovisual services company Creative Technology (CT) deployed the technology for its match play relay requirements, including a number of Lighthouse Technologies' Rn7-ER LED screens.

A centrepiece of the on-course visual facilities was the 18th Studio screen. This comprised 20 (w) x 8 (h) panels (20.32m x 6.08m) of Lighthouse Rn7-ER 7mm outdoor enhanced resolution LED screen hung off and below the Sky TV studio. Visible from both the club house and the main hospitality area, this screen, along with two Rn7-ER IMAG screens measuring 6 (w) x 5 (h) panels (6.096m x 3.81m) each, was utilised for bo

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Switzerland - As the Basel Tattoo's celebrated its fifth anniversary this year, it also marked the fifth time that the event has used TiMax delay-matrix processing and showcontrol software to make the marching players' audio localise to their movements on stage and also fix potential musical timing problems presented by the large scale of the arena.

An import of the famed Edinburgh pageant which also uses TiMax, the Basel Tattoo is staged outdoors in front of the 18th century Kaserne Hof barracks next to the Rhine. Various collections of marching or dancing performers are spread out over a 70m by 25m parade arena surrounded by audience seating on three sides.

Swiss sound designer Thomas Strebel this year specified a TiMax2 SoundHubR32 which received MIDI preset control and twelve groups of MADI audio from a Soundcraft Vi6 console, comprised of over 32 radio mics plus CD and ha

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France - APG reports that TH Audio, a major rental company in the south-west of France, has invested in heavily in APG with the purchase of a complete Uniline compact line array system and associated hardware as well as a DMS26 digital loudspeaker processor and the optional network cards.

The move is part of a significant expansion for the Mont de Marsan-based pro audio specialists, who, in addition to the Uniline system, have also invested in a new Eclipse digital mixing console from Innovason, new outboard equipment AND new premises.

"It's fair to say that our feet have barely touched the ground these last few months," said TH Audio's Thierry Avignon. "However, we've also been incredibly successful, so we're not complaining!" The summer season has seen shows with noted French artists such as Jacques Higelin and San Severino, as well as Jamaican reggae art

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UAE - Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, the world's largest indoor theme park, opened its doors to the public on 4 November. It features more than 20 rides and attractions beneath its iconic 200,000 m² red roof.

Unusual Rigging & Engineering were involved in two particular projects at Ferrari World, one outside Galleria Ferrari, where three different red Ferraris have pride of place, hung on platforms on the walls as works of art. Placement was critical, requiring not just detailed measurements, but also a system that would enable careful manoeuvring for the final placement of the platforms.

Unusual's project manager, Leon Ingram, devised a hoist system which comprised a run of square truss and a runner beam carrying two hoists for each platform, thus enabling fine adjustments to be made both laterally and vertically.

The bare platforms were first offered to the wall and positioned

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Poland - The Chopin Museum in Warsaw has been completely re-invented by the Italian architectural partnership of Ico Migliore and Mara Servetto.

"From a technological point of view, this was our most ambitious project yet," says Servetto. "We knew that we wanted to integrate all the sounds, visuals and interactive technologies together, but we also wanted to do it in a way that offered a very human experience."

On entering the exhibits, each visitor is given a unique RFID card which allows them to personalise their experience, interact with the various displays, and ask questions of the museum's electronic data archive. There is no set order in which the exhibits should be viewed; on the contrary, visitors are encouraged to choose their own route, with the RFID code sensing their location every step of the way. Each room relates to a different aspect or era

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UK - 5 Star Cases has again designed and is manufacturing a new case - the PRO-350 FLT - for l DJ equipment manufacturer, Pioneer Europe.

This is based on the success of the PRO-440 case - marketed as "The perfect hard case for 2 x CDJ 400 players, 1 x DJM 400 mixer and 2 USB sticks" - which to date has sold over 7000 units, in Europe alone.

The new PRO-350FLT offers lightweight and durable protection for Pioneer's 2 x CDJ-350s/DJM-350 portable professional DJ system. It also has some new features for which Pioneer returned to 5 Star - to continue the winning collaboration.

The main new physical addition is that the rear section now incorporates a cable management ('loom-box'), to ensure that the connectors and cabling are kept safe and neatly out of sight. This simple 90° up-stand creates the 'loom-box' area. (a separate structure was required on the PRO-440 c

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The Netherlands - Now in its 26th year, the Night of the Proms European Tour, kicked off at the Antwerp Sportpaleis. Lighting design by Geert Vanhout, set off by ShowTex stage curtains, tracks, and motion systems have been key ingredients since NOTP's beginnings and this year's edition is no exception. 15,000 fans on the opening night of NOTP 2010 attest to that.

A new twist on the classic string or cord curtain, are the custom ShowTex Spaghetti projection 'screens'. A total of five of these double layered flexible stage curtains each measuring 8.5m high x 5m wide feature as projection surfaces with a 3D element. The projected images not only appear sharp and lively from any location in the venue, but also allow freedom of movement through the string curtains and images.

Also supplied by ShowTex is the black Molton 15m x 50m backdrop to performances by NOTP 2010 stars Grace Jo

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UK - Visitors to the press launch of designer Paul Smith's Spring and Summer 2011 collection in London were treated to a high-definition display on a video wall made up of nine 60-inch Sharp LFD panels. The display utilized Sharp's PN-V601 professional LCD panel with an ultra-thin bezel just 6.5mm wide, giving viewers a 180" wall of high-definition content to observe.

Paul Smith used four of the screens to showcase backstage footage from their new spring/summer 2011 catwalk collections for men and women . The remaining five screens played exclusive short films made by Sir Paul himself, including one of him riding with the Rapha Condor Sharp pro-cycling team. The versatility of the video wall allowed for six different films to be displayed at once creating "a fully immersive viewing experience".

Sir Paul Smith commented, "We are looking to work more and more

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Russia - Some 62 miles to the west of the Urals, in the federal district of the Volga, lies the city of Ufa, capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. The largest Russian Orthodox church in the city is around 100 years old and capable of accommodating congregations of up to 1,500. The building has a colourful history, having functioned, variously, as a prison, an aircraft workshop, and a cinema in the course of the communist period.

Now the church has been renovated from the ground up and equipped with a new sound system from Electro-Voice. One of the most awkward factors for the acoustic engineers here was the reverberation time, with RT60 beneath the central dome extending to several seconds, severely compromising intelligibility. However, Ufa-based First Install Company, confident in the assistance of Electro-Voice's Russian partner Ruton S, was undaunted by the chall

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Ireland - Pearl AV is the first customer to snap up the new V-1600HD Live Video Switcher from the Roland Systems Group. Pearl's new unit went out to work on the day it arrived, and, within weeks, has become an integral element of the company's HD platform.

"Our visuals department are delighted to welcome the V-1600 to our HD product range," says Pearl's MD and founder Frank White. "The mixer integrates perfectly with our existing HD projection stocks; we were the first company in Ireland to purchase HD 18K lumen projectors, and now, with the V-1600HD, we can offer true HD vision mixing seamlessly from source right through to our hi-brite screens."

TheYouth Citizenship Awards, produced as a TV programme starring guest performers Jedward, provided a solid test for the V-1600HD in its first few weeks. Pearl's production team, led by technical director Paul Cav

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UK - POLARaudio has announced that with immediate effect it has been appointed exclusive distributor in the UK and Ireland for CobraNet interface provider Attero Tech.

Indiana-based Attero Tech LLC designs and manufactures a range of in-wall CobraNet input and output interfaces that allow integrators to provide clients with cost effective solutions in distributed audio systems. Attero Tech's range of microphone/line level input and output panels offer robust connection to CobraNet networks and are designed to work together or with third party manufacturers devices.

Polar audio's technical director Jon Dew-Stanley commented, "Polar Audio is delighted to represent Attero Tech in the UK and Ireland, the products complement many of our current brands such as XTA, MC2, Australian Monitor and Biamp, assisting us to provide and design UK integrators with intelligent and cost eff

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USA - After more than 40 years together ZZ Top continue to tour worldwide. In 2010 they continued the long tradition of Bandit Lites, also 40 plus years old, as their illumination supplier. Tour manager Pablo Gamboa, production manager Rob Kern and long time lighting designer Chris Stuba all worked with Bandit VP Michael Golden through the year to "deliver Texas to the world".

Stuba's design involves VL 3000 Spots, VL 3500 Washes, VL 2500 Spots, MAC 2000 Washes, Atomic Strobes, Color Blasts and Grand MA consoles. Bandit Jeff Archibeque travels the world keeping continuity to Stuba's crew, wherever the show may be.

(Jim Evans)

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