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Australia - Described by Australian press as "everything a rock show should be," Australian band Cold Chisel's Light the Nitro tour is playing dates across the country with lighting design by Francesco Calvi.

Because the tour is playing such a variety of venues - from large scale arenas to smaller amphitheatres, even circus tents - Calvi turned to Martin Professional's compact MAC 101 wash light as the base fixture in a versatile lighting design.

"We had serious weight restrictions in many venues, and truck space was also limited," Calvi says. "Because the 101s are so light I was able to go with lots of them and keep the rig the same across all venues."

Calvi uses 150 MAC 101s as the foundation of his design with fixtures on eight towers pe

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Super Star - Madonna is to perform during the interval at next year's Super Bowl, it has been confirmed. The singer will take to the stage at the game on Sunday 5 February at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Her performance is expected to coincide with the release of her 12th studio album and she will collaborate with a team from Cirque du Soleil. Broadcast around the world, more than 162m viewers tuned into last year's half-time entertainment which featured Black Eyed Peas.

Parking Protest - Musicians and actors held a protest in London's West End against Westminster City Council's plans to extend parking charges in the borough. The new parking charges will target the area south of Oxford Street, including Theatreland, and will see a rate of £4.40 an hour charged all day on Fridays and Saturdays until midnight, and between 1pm and 6pm on Sundays. It will be t

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UK - The UK government has more than doubled the budget available for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies - from £40m to £81m.

The increase, which was announced in the latest London 2012 quarterly economic report by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), comes from the £9.3bn public purse, which is in theory meant for building, infrastructure and security, while the ceremonies is paid for from the privately-raised funds of the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games - money raised from the IOC, ticket sales and sponsorship.

In the DCMS report, Hugh Robertson MP, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, says: "The ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a unique opportunity to portray a positive image of the UK to a huge potential global audience - an estimated 1 billion people watched the openi

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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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Sweden / USA - LumenRadio has announced a new OEM partnership with Wizard Connection. The Orlando-based company is a manufacturer and provider of products and services ranging from the latest in green LED lighting systems to elaborate custom ice sculptures. Wizard Connection has integrated LumenRadio's CRMX OEM modules into its portable battery powered LED fixtures.

Suitable for special events, parties, and exhibitions the handy fixtures eliminate troublesome cabling and facilitate placement in difficult locations, says the company. The 9W unit, designed to run for a minimum of 10 hours on a single charge, features integral controls for colour, brightness, fades, and presets. A double yoke system functions as a floor stand or simply add a c-clamp to hang the fixture into the rig.

Richard Painter, director of sales at Wizard Connection says, "Partnering with LumenRadio was

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Spain - The domed roof of La Esfera (The Sphere) is a distinctive feature of the city of Alcobendas, north of Madrid, Spain. Hosting a variety of live entertainment, a recent major upgrade of the venue has seen a Yamaha / Nexo digital audio system installed.

Half-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the €650,000 project included new dressing rooms and public cloakrooms, upgraded entrance facilities, an improved electrical system, a higher stage and all-new stage lighting and sound.

The venue is almost constantly in use by performances which showcase a wide range of local, national and international culture, from rock concerts to folk music. This variety of use was a key factor in specifying a new system, as was the requirement that the front of house multicore be routed around the edge of the auditorium. With these in mind, equipment supplier and installer Milan

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Czech Republic - The J.K. Tyl theatre in the Czech Republic city of Plzen (Pilsen) is one of the city's most historic cultural landmarks. Built in 1902, the impressive building honours the city's outstanding theatre tradition, which is second only to that of the capital, Prague. The theatre has recently benefitted from a significant audio system upgrade which has seen the installation of a new Innovason Eclipse GT digital mixing console and a sophisticated EtherSound digital audio network.

Muscdata, exclusive distributor in the Czech Republic for the Innovason brand, selected cable from German cable manufacturer, Sommer Cable as the backbone of the system with an AVM500-ES EtherSound network matrix from Auvitran which enabled star as well as daisy-chain connections. The AVM500 is connected to the control room via optical fibre.

The result is a completely flexible network which

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Denmark - In October 2011, Legoland in Billund, Denmark, offered a variety of Halloween-themed activities, competitions and special shows. As part of the spooky fun, Legoland dressed up its King's Castle in Halloween-themed colours and graphics, including animated images from energy-efficient, LED-based Martin Professional Exterior 400 Image Projectors.

Projected onto the King's Castle's turrets were a variety of themed images - ghosts, skeletons, jack-o'-lanterns and bats - up to six images per luminaire with creative options such as image rotation, dynamic focus and dimming. The Exterior 400 Image Projector's interchangeable colour slots allowed each image to change colour up to eight times, adding a further dynamic element to the ghostly atmosphere.

At over 7000 lumens of power, the Exterior 400 Image Projector had no problem handling the 40m projection throws, and the fixt

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Egypt - The Ballroom of the luxury Fairmont Towers Heliopolis, Cairo, features four spectacular chandeliers designed to evoke the living corals of the Red Sea. Designed by Maurice Brill Lighting Design and implemented by Artistic Licence Integration, the chandeliers provide highly versatile illumination for this2000-person capacity space.

Each chandelier is rectangular in shape, the largest being over 6m long and 3m wide. Structurally, the illusion of coral is created by a forest of curved glass rods, hanging stalactite-like from the chandelier base. With the addition of dynamic lighting effects, the forest springs into life as synchronised pulses and patterns of light run across all four installations.

Artistic Licence supplied the luminaires and lighting control used to achieve these effects. These comprised some 720 custom RGB LED linear fixtures, each 0.5m in length, and 9

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Cyprus - Adamson's exclusive distributor in Cyprus, ProSonic Audio-Lights, recently installed a Point Series system in the Joko Restaurant, located in the city of Nicosia. Its bright and open space promise a pleasant and warm atmosphere. The sounds to compliment the flavour of the establishment, features the full and warm sounding Adamson Point Series cabinets throughout the venue.

he design consists of eight Point 8's and four Point 115 subs for low frequency extension. The Adamson M Series Processor is used for control and the entire rig is powered with Lab Gruppen C Series amplification.

The Joko Restaurant does not close the doors after dinner. The trendy restaurant doubles as a lounge/club into the night. Director of Prosonic Audio-Lights, Christos Chrysnathou, comments, "The Joko installation was really a simple installation. The owner was asking for the best high f

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Croatia - The Summer Sea Coast Show takes place annually in Croatia's picturesque seaside towns of Opatija and Rijeka on the Adriatic Sea.

This year, a crowd of around 2,000 turned up to hear Zagreb rock legends Psihomodo Pop and The Beat Fleet (TBF), a rap rock band from Split - with fixtures from PR Lighting, supplied by production company GLS, bringing the scenography to life.

The company purchased eight versatile Pilot 575s from PR Lighting's Croatian distributors, Turbo-X d.o.o, which went straight onto the show.

GLS' purchasing decision was based on the value for money offered by these fixtures, according to Turbo-X d.o.o's Dario Stipic, "They were delighted with the performance," he said. "The Pilot 575's will now go into their rental inventory for use on shows throughout the year."

Meanwhile the company reports growing interest in PR Lighting fi

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Germany - Fohhn Audio AG has released the A-1 live, a new portable stereo USB audio interface that has been specially developed to "enable high-quality, trouble-free transmission of audio directly from a computer/laptop to a professional sound reinforcement system", without the need for additional hardware such as a mixer or DI box.

Primarily designed for live sound applications and permanent installations, the A-1 live is a stand-alone USB device equipped with balanced XLR stereo outputs and a galvanically isolated USB connection. These features enable audio to be directly transmitted from the computer to the sound reinforcement system avoiding any interference, hum, reduction in sound quality or loss of output level - common issues that can occur when using interfaces with unbalanced connectors, or when there is no galvanic isolation between the computer and the inte

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UK - The Leader Light Stage 6-06 LED fixture - which features a traditional look of six round lenses mounted in a 600mm linear batten, but with each lens powered by a 10W white LED source -recently made dramatic appearances lighting Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds on The Jonathan Ross Show, and on Bowling for Soup's UK tour.

Russ Grubiak, lighting programmer for The Jonathan Ross Show was "very excited about the use of a very special product." He and show lighting director Oli Richards considered various ways of using the 6-06 before deciding on their approach: "We figured that a lot of people would use them in straight lines or as a grid. Oli's preference was for a non-uniform, random focus that filled the ceiling space and looked as edgy as possible. We mounted the fixtures in a ball and socket TV grip, which suited our monopole hanging grid at the stu

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USA - Skin care giants, Nu Skin, recently held their global sales meeting when 15,000 sales reps from around the world assembled in Salt Lake City to learn, celebrate and connect over a three day period. The expansive Energy Solutions Arena was dressed for the occasion, and Michael Marto, CEO of event producers Executive Visions Inc., collaborated once again with John Featherstone of Lightswitch for innovative lighting and media design.

Featherstone's brief from Marto and the EVI team was to help bring their vision to life by creating an exciting 'arena scale' design that would be interesting and engaging from the front of the room to the back. A combination of a dynamic lighting system and an LED stage deck made for an inventive palette of creative tools, which included six of GLP's new impression Spot One LED heads.

With three days of meetings and awards - interspersed with

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USA - Josh Groban's Straight to You Tour played its first show -fresh from its European leg - at the Bank Atlantic Centrein Sunrise, Fla. Fourteen COLORado Batten 144 Tour linear wash lights illuminated the stage's backdrop adding depth and colour to the faux building - reminiscent of old-word ruins - that doubled as a projection surface for video content.

Flanked by sets of stairs, the open stage allowed Groban to walk straight into the audience. At times, the accompanying band - over a dozen horn players, drummers, violinists, guitarists and more - perched themselves on the edge of the stage or on the stairs as well. This gave the performance a theatrical look overall, lending an intimate touch to the large arena.

At other times, the band plays fairly close to the backdrop where the slim, linear and unobtrusive COLORado Batten 144 Tour wash lights uplight the scene in

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UK - Edinburgh-based Northern Light has announced this morning the death of its Head of Project Delivery, David Vandepeear. "It is with extreme sadness that Northern Light must today announce the death of David Vandepeear," the company said. "David, or 'Vandy' as he was affectionately known, had been with Northern Light for more than 20 years and was well known and loved throughout the industry.

A key member of Northern Light's team, David left his considerable mark as a project manager on numerous key projects such as Leicester's Curve, Theatres on the Bay in Singapore, The Sage in Gateshead and Manchester's Lowry Centre.

More recently, David had taken on the post of Head of Project Delivery with responsibility for overseeing all of Northern Light's installation projects. "It was a role he was a natural at and he was loved and respected by his entire team,

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The Netherlands - Ateis Europe will showcase a raft of new solutions at ISE 2012, while its new IDA8 fully compliant public address voice alarm system makes its ISE debut.

The IDA8 system has already been deployed at Silverstone's Formula One racetrack and London Underground's new Paddington station with considerable success.

The IDA8 is a 'one-box' solution that runs open DSP software. It boasts IP connectivity and features an IP microphone to maximise this facility. In addition it offers remote diagnostics for easy configuration and enhanced systems operations.

Also featuring as part of the ISE showcase, the UAP G2 stackable, programmable digital audio processor, steerable column array loudspeaker, the Messenger G2, and the Orbit omni-directional line array are designed to "create a new standard in modern PA/VA, commercial and professional audio".

Amongst Ateis

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UK - Paradigm AV will have a powerful presence at BETT 2012 (11-14 January, London Olympia).

After securing the contract to provide well over 200 dnp Supernova Core optical screens for primary and secondary schools in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, the company will be showcasing the power of this front projection platform - possibly in 3D as well as 2D.

Paradigm AV also represents GestureTek, gesture-controlled technology in the UK - which is proving increasingly popular in schools, particularly those with special educational needs.

One of the more recent innovations has been the GestureTek Cube, which will be on display at BETT. This is a compact, turnkey, 'plug and play' interactive portable interactive floor. The latest version projects entertaining games and special effects in a larger, higher resolution image, onto virtually any floor, enabling children to

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USA - High schools and colleges from coast to coast are investing in Robert Juliat followspots, according to Bill Conner and Paul Sanow of Bill Conner Associates LLC, theatre planners and designers in Oak Park, Illinois.

They have specified Robert Juliat Super Korrigan 1200W HMI followspots and Buxie 575W MSD followspots in both newly-constructed and renovated theatres in public and private high schools and colleges across the country.

"Schools typically don't go for high-end lighting, but I like these fixtures and strongly recommend them," says Conner. "There was a perception that the Robert Juliat followspots were more expensive than others on the market. But my conclusion is that they are not: On a dollar-to-dollar performance basis, they rate better. And thanks to their versatility, they're a great pick for educational institutions and the variety of product

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UK - The hit of the 2009Durham Festival, Crown of Light -a stunning son-et-lumière that uses the extraordinary architecture of Durham Cathedral as its canvas - returned to the city once again this winter.

Created by Ross Ashton, with a soundtrack by Robert Ziegler and JohnDel'Nero, Crown of Light draws its visual material from inside the cathedral itself and from the Lindisfarne Gospels.

The PIGI projectors were supplied by entertainment lighting specialist White Light, continuing a collaboration with Ashton that has encompassed projects from Edinburgh to New York.

"White Light is a valued partner on my projects," Ashton notes. "They are helpful and accommodating, and work hard to make sure that everything goes well prior to delivery and during the operation of the kit."

"Ross's projects are always something to behold," comments

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UK - With effect from Monday 21 November 2011 Independent Studio Services has moved to larger premises at: Low Green, Nowton, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP29 5ND (Tel: 01284 765066).

The move has come about to facilitate the increased demand for the company's services of design, supply and installation of complete stage engineering mechanical facilities.

Under the leadership of MD Simon Caldwell, Independent Studio Services brings many years of experience providing mechanical and electrical engineering solutions to the performing arts industry, from initial design and planning, right through to the supply of hardware, and full installation.

Independent Studio Services also provides project management services on full stage equipment installations, interfacing with clients and contractors to ensure the most efficient, timely and safe execution of a project.

"Independent

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UK - Musician and composer Kathryn Tickell has been using DPA 4099 instrument clip mics, supplied by UK distributor Sound Network, for her Northumbrian Voices project, which has been touring the UK.

Northumbrian Voices is based on interviews and recordings made with family members and shepherd musicians from whom Tickell learnt tunes and songs. Three generations of musicians perform in a reflection of strong communities, their music and collective stories. Three violins, which are being played alongside such traditional instrument as Northumbrian pipes and melodeon, are being miked with DPA 4099Vs, designed specifically for mounting on violas and violins.

Tickell first encountered the 4099s playing violin for Sting's A Winter's Night...Live from Durham Cathedral concerts. "Durham Cathedral is not the easiest place to amplify acoustic music," she

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