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Switzerland - From 26 November 2010 to 2 January 2011, Geneva illuminated its lakeside promenade thanks to the tenth edition of the Festival Arbres et Lumières.

One of the artists invited, Italian director and lighting designer Simona Braga proposed a mini eight-minute son et lumière with music and recitation. Le souffle du monde is a sequence of projections and lighting effects that develop the basic themes of the festival (nature and light). The projections have been achieved using high resolution photo gobos for the graphic designs created by the author, and Clay Paky metal gobos to produce some of the effects, such as the woods and fog which appear to come from the lake and disperse with the sunrise.

The lighting effects are projected onto four fan-shaped screens be

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Lebanon - QSC AcousticDesign AD-S52 surface mount loudspeakers were utilised by noted restaurateur Mourad 'Momo' Mazouz, when he moved his Moroccan themed concept to Beirut recently.

In opening his eponymous Momo At The Souks, the proprietor says he wanted to remain faithful to his origins, and discovered in the Lebanese capital fusion between tradition and modernity in an Arabic Mediterranean city. Situated above the jewellery souks in the centre of the city, the new build restaurant overlooks the chaos of the city below.

Contacted by Lebanese construction company, Solidere, QSC's Lebanese distributors, Technosound, have provided sound distribution to the extended terrace, which has a capacity of more than 200 seats. The overall capacity, taking in the café, bar and restaurant, is 300.

Mixing vintage furniture, designer pieces and made to measure fixtures in the shel

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Finland - Karjalatalo (Karelia House) is a large cultural centre in Joensuu in eastern Finland which combines the Kerubin Keittiö (Kerubi Kitchen) restaurant with two live rooms.

The three-storey venue offers background music in the ground floor restaurant (and terrace overlooking the river) where acoustic artists and DJs often appear.

The 225-capacity Cellar Bar and the small stage accommodates a Martin Audio Blackline+ PA system, comprising four Martin Audio Blackline F15+, four Martin Audio S218+ subs and LE1200S floor monitors.

Upstairs, the 400-capacity Kerubi-Sali main stage and the highly specified room boast a Martin Audio W8LM Mini line array (four elements a side), plus a W8LMD down-fill box at the bottom of each hang, a pair of Blackline F10+ providing centre cluster imaging and six Martin Audio WMX subwoofers recessed across the front, under the stage extension.

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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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USA - Martin US has already logged hundreds of miles on the first leg of its 2011 Engineered for the Eye road show and has thousands of miles and months to go.

The 2011 road show includes a newly revamped truck and trailer full of the latest Martin Professional dynamic lighting and visual effects products for the entertainment, commercial and architectural lighting markets.

Over the next several months, the Engineered for the Eye road show will cover an impressive 15,000 miles while hosting some 110 events in 33 cities. As a first, the schedule also includes stops in Canada.

(Jim Evans)

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Mexico - Keeping alive the Doors spirit, two of its original members Robby Krieger and Ray Manzareck, are still active and touring under the name of Ray Manzareck and Bobby Krieger of The Doors.

When The Doors were visiting Mexico on their Latin America concert tour, one of the dates was at the Art Palace in Morelia, Michoacan, where the company Soundset Productions was in charge of the production and supplied the event with a large scale RCF TT+ System supported by Mexican RCF distributor Hermes.

Professional advice was provided by RCF product specialist Oscar Mora and local sound engineer Angel Hernandez.

The main front system was based on RCF TTL55-A and RCF TTL33-A. The TT+ System setup also included several RCF TTS28-A and TT25-A units. Sound Engineer for the show was Grammy award winner Michael Dumas.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - Located in New York's Broadway Theatre district, the New Victory Theatre has installed a Midas PRO3 live audio system. New York's oldest working theatre, The New Victory was built in 1900 by Oscar Hammerstein and seats 499 patrons in a traditional proscenium style layout. Reopened in 1995 after a period of non-activity, the venue is the city's first and only full-time performing arts theatre for kids and their families.

"After 15 years, it was time for us to update our systems and enter the 21st century," states David Jensen, director of production for New 42nd Street Inc. "Part of our mission was to build an audience for the future, and we want New Victory Theatre productions to be as technically advanced as any of the other shows - just aimed at a younger audience. The PRO3 console is a perfect fit."

Anthony Nittoli, design principal at Connecticut-

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UAE - A major service provider throughout the GCC countries, Dubai-based Resources Stage Technologies (RST) have boosted their inventory of Christie projectors, with the purchase of four Roadie HD+35K 1080 HD DLP devices.

With a sister company, Wide Angle Production, operating from Beirut, the company collectively services events throughout the UAE, as well as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan.

Specialists in large-scale events, RST has been buying Christie products on a regular basis for the past five years and already owned a Roadie HD25K and HD30K (as well as a pair of LX1000 LCD projectors) before making this latest acquisition.

With the Asian Beach Games 2010 in Muscat, Oman upcoming, RST needed even higher brightness projectors. "With the 2K resolution, the HD+35K would allow us to achieve this brightness while maintaining the s

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Fraud Busters - Two of the biggest live event organisers in the UK have agreed to a police idea to protect people from fraudulent ticket websites. Festival Republic and Live Nation will send out tickets as soon as possible, rather than waiting, sometimes for six months, until just before performances. Police say the delay makes it difficult to prove fake sites did not have the tickets to sell in the first place. The National Fraud Authority says £168m is lost annually through ticket scams.

Genuine ticket sellers claim the delay in sending out tickets is meant to limit the time counterfeiters have to copy the originals. But an unintended consequence of this has allowed tens of thousands of people over the past five years to buy tickets from fraudulent websites, without realising the tickets will not arrive at all until it is too late, according to BBC Radio 4's You and Y

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Brazil / France - A new documentary on the native Kaiapos of Brazil produced by the French channel TF1 was shot using IaniLEDs 54 portable, low-weight units, capturing the lives of Amazonian Indians in their own environment.

Suitable for location filming, IaniLEDs 54 are designed for use where mains power supply is unavailable. In such locations, a fast and discrete technical set-up is often all-important. For this South American production, TF1 used two IaniLEDs 54, 54W 12V, powered simply by camera batteries, fitted on board by a gold mount bracket. The absence of leads and external packs made the lights highly manoeuvrable.

IaniLEDs are tested on the road and offer a reliable and powerful daylight source in extreme shooting conditions, making life for the lighting cameramen considerably easier. The specially designed housing, married to the low temperature of the lamp body

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UK - PLASA's forthcoming European AGM and Members Lunch is expected to attract a strong turnout on the back of a significant 12 months for the organization.

It's just a year since members of PLASA voted overwhelmingly to merge with leading North American trade association ESTA, and on the 1 January this year, the two formally came together under the PLASA name, creating one of the largest membership organizations in the industry with over 1100 members worldwide.

Though still in its early stages, the merger has already greatly strengthened PLASA and given it a new profile in the industry, reinforced by a new PLASA logo and brand identity. The first phase of a new PLASA website has gone live and the first meetings of the new Regional Boards and over-arching Governing Body have also taken place. New services and research projects have been introduced, and the teams are currently

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UK - Continuing its busy spring season of new shows, entertainment lighting specialist White Light has been chosen to supply the lighting to Shrek, the musical adaptation of the hit Dreamworks Animation film that has already been greeted with acclaim in New York and on its current US tour.

The stage version of Shrek has been created by an experienced theatrical team, including directors Jason Moore and Rob Ashford, choreographer Josh Prince, designer Tim Hatley and lighting designer Hugh Vanstone. Shrek marks White Light's second 'green' collaboration with Vanstone this year, having also supplied the lighting equipment for his design for The Wizard of Oz!.

Vanstone is once again making full use of White Light's extensive lighting rental stock, his rig based around a core of Vari-Lite equipment: VL3000 Spots, VL3000 Washes, VL3500 framing spots and V

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UAE - Gerriets, the German producer of fabrics, projection screens and stage technique has announced the formation of its latest operation - Gerriets Stage Equipment (FZE) with industrial and trading license in the Middle East region.

"Due to increasing demand for high quality entertainment based products and services, Gerriets decided to form Gerriets Stage Equipment (FZE)," says the manufacturer. "With the formation of this company, we will be able to fulfil the regional needs of our clients much more efficiently, directly from our UAE facility.

"We are pleased to announce that Mr. Axel Beisenwenger will be the managing director of Gerriets Stage Equipment (FZE). Mr. Beisenwenger offers years of experience, knowledge and contacts in the theatre and event markets within the UAE."

Gerriets has a number of new products scheduled and has also published

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Australia - Blacktown's Bowman Hall is popular venue used in a variety of modes for all manner of productions from concerts and wedding receptions to simple meetings. It is a large, reverberant, asymmetric space with galleries on each side of the long axis.

Audio consultant Trevan Johns of Trevan Johns and Associates was employed to design a new audio system with a level of protection and performance to allow for intuitive operation in a simple user mode, or full access to a digital mixer in concert mode.

The lower level ceilings in the gallery areas shade the central cluster and so required time delayed loudspeakers to provide acceptable performance. This is of particular importance on the northern side of the hall, where an extension to the hall has increased the low-ceilinged area to more that 5m wide.

Trevan specified a front of house loudspeaker array consisting of six

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USA - Over the past year, Neon Trees has cemented its reputation as one of the top up-and-coming indie rock acts in the US with a chart topping single, a featured performance at this year's SXSW festival, and a tour with My Chemical Romance. With a number of one-off fly dates punctuating the tour, stage manager and monitor engineer Mike Bangs and FOH engineer Neal Duffy selected a pair of Allen & Heath iLive T112 consoles to meet the band's needs.

Neon Trees is a straightforward rock band, with two guitars, bass, keyboard and drums along with four vocals. "We are using 24 inputs," Bangs notes. "We are sharing preamps between monitors and FOH and doing a digital split from the Monitor console's iDR-32, so our FOH snake is just one Cat 5 cable. The second iDR-32 MixRack is currently being used for the FOH console's DSP. That will change when we start headlining on o

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USA - Alfred University's new Miller Theatre has opened in Alfred, New York with a pair of Robert Juliat Topaze followspots.

Barbizon Lighting NY was the integrator and supplier for the theatre, working with Milford, Ohio's Beck Studios, which was responsible for the venue's rigging. The Miller Theatre is the latest addition to the Miller Performing Arts Centre, which features the C.D. Smith III Flexible Theatre, a black-box space; The Rod Brown Acting Studio; dance and instrumental music rehearsal halls; a scene shop; and faculty offices.

The new proscenium theatre is a multifunctional venue designed to host larger theatre, dance and music performances. Both the Performing Arts Centre, which opened in 1995, and the new theatre are the gifts of Dr. Marlin Miller, class of 1954 and former chair and current member of the Board of Trustees. The 498-seat Miller Theatre has a stage

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Sweden - Specializing in live audio for concert tours and corporate events, Stockholm -based Louder Than Love AB has upgraded its live sound arsenal to include a Soundcraft Vi1 console. Founded in 2007, Louder Than Love owner Jonas Skramstad has worked with numerous international artists and companies such as Volvo, SAAB, IBM, the National Hockey League, Coca Cola and Astra Zeneca.

Skramstad's specialty is front of house mixing and he has worked on tours for a wide variety of Swedish artists including the Cardigans, Miss Li, A Camp, Laleh and Dundertåget, among others. His routine is split to approximately 50 percent live music tours and 50 percent corporate events. The majority of the time, he can be found freelancing for various production and rental companies. In addition, Skramstad regularly conducts a live audio seminar and workshop for SAE (School of Audio Engineering) St

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Australia - Narrated by Russell Crowe, Ben-Hur rivalled the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in its size and scale. For two consecutive nights, the show filled the 15,000 sq.m performance area with 200 actors, 24 horses and a full-on chariot race in the 80,000-capacity ANZ Stadium.

Travelling outside Paris for the first time since it debuted in 2006, this successful production by StadeFrance Live Events required a high level of international cooperation between its French producers and Australian logistics teams. All audio technical management was in the hands of GL Events Audiovisual, and a team headed up by Fred Viricel, the technical director of sound.

In the world's biggest theatrical space, audio distribution was planned and achieved over an EtherSound network, using Ethernet and optical links. The system, designed by J.Lyonnet, used L'Acoustics cabinets, wi

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USA - grandMA2 was out in force when the New World Symphony opened its new Frank Gehry-designed home in Miami Beach. The New World Centre is the first American concert space built from the ground up to integrate sophisticated video, theatrical lighting and flexible stage space, and a grandMA2 full-size and a grandMA2 ultra-light play a key role in lighting control on the campus.

The New World Symphony is an elite training orchestra for musicians who go on to work at major symphony orchestras; it's known as one of the most innovative organisations in the country, and the new concert hall is a testament to its state-of-the-art outlook.

"I chose the grandMA2 because of the amount of control we need," says lighting designer Stefan DeWilde, a veteran of the famed Cirque du Soleil. "We have 300 conventional fixtures and hundreds of LEDs in the atrium which run off

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Czech Republic - Clay Paky Alpha Beams 1500 have been used as the key lighting tool for a technically ambitious, 360-degree staging of Pietro e Lucia, based on the 1920s anti-war novel by French novelist Romain Rolland. Focusing on the impact of the First World War on the lives of two lovers, the show is a multimedia combination of dance, film, rock and opera, featuring soloists from Russia's Bolshoi Ballet, Italian opera stars, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Choir, together with rock musicians.

The production involves a circular stage and uses 3D animated film in place of traditional scenery. The Alpha 1500 Beams were chosen by the designers for their ability to provide powerful but high-definition mid-air beams. They form the key component of the lighting rig, and are used as a complement to the cinematic scenery - in one instance the Alph

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Europe - With a repertoire combining progressive rock, ambient, electronica, trip hop and many others, London-based 'musical collective' Archive is a band unafraid to experiment with the very latest sonic developments. One of the newest innovations adopted by band front of house engineer Spike Jones is an Apex Intelli-X² processor.

British audiences are traditionally more reserved about 'challenging' music, but Archive's live shows are extremely popular in continental Europe. On the band's latest tour, Jones has been manning two digital consoles at the FOH position - a Digidesign Profile for the band and an Innovason Eclipse mixing digital microphones for an accompanying orchestra. Both are digitally linked, with the latter as the master console and an Apex Intelli-X² 48 inserted to EQ house PA systems in the tour's venues.

"I have been using it on tour for a couple of

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Europe - Two things stick out about the Martin MAC 101 for lighting/production designer Travis Shirley on the current Enrique Iglesias tour.

"Rarely do you get the colours that we get out of these. Across the board I've never seen such good saturated colours," he says about the LED wash light, adding, "And the speed - it is limitless with a fluid motion all the way through. It really changes how you think."

Travis, who has been with Enrique Iglesias for six years, is using an all Martin rig on the current Euphoria world tour, a rig that includes over 200 of the remarkably small and super light MAC 101 washes.

As the show's overall visioneer, Travis works closely with Iglesias as far as what the show will look like. He comments, "The tour design represents the emotional impact of the music and Enrique is involved in the production design more s

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