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China - China's largest music industry media group, The Shanghai Synergy Culture & Entertainment Group, has upgraded its music recording studio with a new SSL Duality console, Pro Tools and outboard equipment installed by Langdale Technical Consulting and, for the first time in China, using exclusively Blue Series Van Damme cable from VDC Trading.

Headquartered in Shanghai, the company is owned by one of the largest media conglomerates in China - The Shanghai Media and Entertainment Group. This flagship studio was originally built in about 1985 and was in dire need of refurbishment. Lighting and sound designer David Parry worked as consultant on the project and appointed Langdale Technical to handle the installation. The decision to use Van Damme cable was a popular one with the C

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UK - Lighting and visuals rental specialist Colour Sound Experiment kick started another busy festival season this year by supplying lighting equipment and design, LED screen, rigging and crew to We Are FSTVL which made some serious noise at Damyn's Hall Aerodrome, Upminster, east London.

It was the second event after bursting audaciously onto the EDM scene last year and this year the organisers upped the ante on several fronts, expanding the event to two days, increasing the level of production and securing an action-packed line-up with main stage headliners Richie Hawtin (Saturday) and Fatboy Slim (Sunday).

Colour Sound deployed five trucks of kit, 26 crew, around 500sq.m of their proprietary BT LED screen, over 350 moving lights and lots of strobes, blinders and atmospheric effects to the site, where all their elements were co-ordinated by crew chief Andy Melleney.

Colour

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Taiwan - MoMo TV, one of the biggest TV shopping channels in Taiwan, has recently relocated to a new production building owned by parent company Taiwan Mobile. As part of the move, the channel has added three DiGiCo SD8 consoles to its broadcast facilities.

Broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, MoMo TV is based in three new studios in the new facility at the Neihu Hi-tech Industry Park, Taipei. Each studio features a new DiGiCo SD8, installed as part of a comprehensive technical upgrade and replacing the channel's previous analogue consoles.

DiGiCo distributor Rightway Audio Consultants worked together with the local system integrator Acesonic Technology Co., Ltd. for the design, supply, installation and commissioning of the new equipment.

"The SD8s deliver a much more efficient and powerful audio system than MoMo TV had previously," says Rightway's Alan

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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 - At the Lightfair Show in Las Vegas (3-5 June), TMB will introduce Firefly's premium LED Marquee/Festoon lighting systems to the American market. The Firefly range offers the "old school" look of traditional Marquee/Festoon lighting without the headache of constantly changing the bulbs, the risk of broken glass, and the danger and power draw of high voltage.

Available in frosted versions in warm white, cool white, and a selection of rich, deep colours, plus the warm white 'filament' bulbs, the Firefly system runs on safe 24-volt AC or DC, with shatter-proof bulbs, making it economical to operate and virtually maintenance free. The clear V6 and V12 'Filament' bulbs will satisfy the most discerning lighting designer with a beautiful warm, vintage look and unrivalled colour temperature consistency.

Also in the Firefly range are a selection of unique flat, self-leve

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UK - Hertfordshire-based production, entertainment and event-management company Production Plus, recently put an Inspired Audio Axis AX12 loudspeaker system through its paces.

The system, supplied by LMC Audio, was used on a high profile event with a contemporary artist who had minimal staging and space for technical equipment.

Julian Rees, technical director of Production Plus, comments: "With Axis AX12 our client's expectations were met with limited visual impact, allowing clean sight lines whilst also keeping the artist/engineers happy in terms of performance."

He continues: "A large section of our work is to supply artiste technical specs to meet riders, however, these need to be acceptable to our corporate clients - not always an easy trade off! A problem we have long had is artistes wanting large wedges on stage. Axis AX12 gave us the solution of bi-amp

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USA - Northeast High School is a four-year public high school in Pasadena, Maryland. With almost 1,600 students, Northeast has several notable sports teams, a growing music programme and its own designated acting troupe that puts on three shows a year.

Originally constructed in 1964, Northeast has recently undergone a major renovation. As part of that renovation, the school received new AV systems in its main and auxiliary gymnasiums, its multi-purpose cafeteria and its black box theater.

Northeast hired consultant Steven Sinclair of Polysonics, an engineering firm in Warrenton, Virginia, to design the new AV systems. After winning a public bid, HP Electronics, a full-service AV integrator in Baltimore, installed the school's new AV systems.

Sinclair specified Community loudspeakers for all three Northeast venues. The gymnasiums feature Community R1-94 two-way loudspeakers s

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France - In the Bohemian Marais District, in the centre of bustling Paris, a new tech hub opened in the final months of 2013. The Silicon Sentier aims to provide a digital ecosystem to help aid and accelerate tech innovation in small and upcoming companies.

Media and tech designers Blow Factory offered the Sentier the idea of providing some interactive fun and excitement, using Light Emissions creative LED video display system. Blow Factory owner

Paula Guastella had worked with Light Emissions previously in London, and knew that the Art system could provide the brightness and pure video speed needed.

Blow Factory's Paula Guastella explains: "We wanted to surprise people entering the lobby. As they walk past this large glass wall with colourful moving images, they spot their own 'body shadow' shown on the screen. They stop, turn around and wave and have a little dance!&q

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Spain - A Chinese telecoms giant recently staged their 'Mobile Changes The World' event for over 1,000 special guests at the 2014 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, with a gala evening of entertainment at the St Jordi Arena. This was produced by Imagination Asia, a global creative agency headquartered in London (UK), complete with lighting design by Steve Nield, which featured over 150 Robe moving lights.

Nield, working directly for Imagination's Shanghai office under senior executive producer Linda Bell, specified 80 x Robe ROBIN LEDWash 800s for the event - together with other moving and generic luminaires, strobes and LED fixtures. Unbeknown to him until he arrived in Barcelona, it would be the first time that he used Robe Pointes.

72 Pointes were installed on the lighting rig by lighting supplier Arcoiris Lighting System, replacing the original beam fixtures

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UK - PixMob recently partnered with Coldplay to amaze their fans during their concert at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend, on Saturday, 24 May in Glasgow. While singing A Sky Full of Stars, the second official single from their latest album, Ghost Stories, a shower of stars fell on the audience, delighting the crowd.

At the climax of the concert, 10,000 blinking PixMob Helicos were dropped, creating a beautiful surprise for the thousands of lucky fans attending the show. As Chris Martin sang, stars slowly began to descend.

The Helicos, printed with a design inspired by the band's album cover, were dropped from four scissor forklifts placed around the crowd at a height of 20m. They blinked with bright white light, falling at a speed of 1.5 m/s into the hands of the attendees.

The main challenge for PixMob in creating this performance was the weather, specifically the w

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UK - Doughty Engineering will be unveiling its latest offering of Drop Arms and H Frames at this year's ABTT show. The new, modular products, which complement each other, will allow designers to quickly create robust and professional lighting or scenic structures of varying drops and shapes.

"This exciting new range received an amazing response in its prototype form and is now ready for market, opening up the possibility for highly innovative lighting design," said Mark Chorley. "We have full pricing information available and we will be showcasing a selection of H Frames and Drop Arm configurations on the stand. Any one of the Doughty Engineering staff on the stand will be happy to demonstrate the product and answer any questions" he said.

Doughty will also have a selection of its clamps and truss adaptors on display on the stand. All made from solid, high

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UK - White Light is returning to the annual ABTT Theatre Show for 2014, after many successful years at the show. The leading lighting supplier for West End and touring theatre will exhibit on stand 70, showcasing the latest in lighting, AV, and effects equipment from popular manufacturers including: ADB Lighting, Altman Lighting, Avolites, CORE Lighting, ETC, GDS, Interactive Technologies, JB Lighting, LSC Lighting, Look Solutions, Philips Selecon, Rainbow Colour Changers and Wireless Solutions

White Light team members will be on hand from all areas - hire, sales, installation, events, and technical service - to answer questions and discuss project and venue-specific solutions for lighting challenges of all shapes and sizes.

Those planning to attend the show can register for FREE through White Light by visiting bit.ly/abttshow2014.

Managing director Bryan Raven describes Whi

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd. have been appointed as the exclusive UK dealer for the Prolights brand.

The range of lighting, video and effects products was recently officially unveiled at PLASA Focus, Leeds, receiving a great deal of interest and an overwhelmingly positive response from a wide range of visitors to the show.

The Prolights range offers designers innovative technology solutions which deliver reliable, creative tools at a price that all productions can afford. By taking advantage of high efficiency production methods, products deliver the ideal balance between quality and value to professionals looking to maximise the return on their investment.

The impressive lighting range features over 200 high performance product lines from a wide selection of LEDs, including Pars, battens, moving lights, matrices, Fresnels, Profiles and effects, to Plati

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South Africa - The evolution of Ultra Events started in 1996 when the Cape Town based company supplied DJ equipment to the industry. Within two years, the demand for dry hire and technical support overtook sales, and as a result the full time rental company was born. The revolution of Ultra Events has been continuous, morphing from an initial sound company to provide a full house of services including sound, lighting, staging and events, and as a testimony of keeping up to date with the latest technology, the ownership of 12 Robe Pointes.

"I saw the Pointes at Mediatech in 2013, and being a true Capetonian, it took me a while to come round and make a final decision," said Costa Champanis, owner of Ultra Events. "Due to their versatility and market acceptance we have now embarked on first purchase, 12 of 24 units."

The purchase was made from the Robe South A

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UK - Star Events, an award-winning UK staging, seating and rigging specialist, has become part of a multi-national business as Altrad Group acquires a majority shareholding.

The seven-figure investment spearheads Altrad's move into the entertainment sector via Altrad Beaver 84 Ltd, which operates from 12 UK locations. Star Events becomes a subsidiary of Altrad Beaver 84 but will stay based at its own Bedford premises.

Chairman Dr Mohed Altrad, whose philosophy is to create 'a collegiate group of companies, embracing their differences', says his group's financial commitment will not change the make-up of the successful Star Events team, or its methodology. The same philosophy has been applied to the six previous Altrad acquisitions in the UK.

Star Events' director, Roger Barrett, comments: "For some time now we have been aware of the need for substantial investment to en

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USA - A pair of Robert Juliat Victor followspots with DMX dimming has been installed at Studio 54 in Manhattan where the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Cabaret is packing the house. Tony Award-winner Alan Cumming reprises his role in Cabaret which also stars multi-Oscar nominee Michelle Williams who is making her Broadway debut.

"I was very familiar with Juliat fixtures from working in Europe," says Mike Baldassari, co-lighting designer for Cabaret with Peggy Eisenhauer. "The Victor followspot was in the exact neighbourhood of what we needed at 1800 watts. We did a shoot out with some other followspots to test not only for brightness but also for noise level. The shoot out was facilitated by electrician John Wooding; Ron Fogel of Fogel Associates and Fred Lindauer of Robert Juliat provided the Victors for us to test."

Baldas

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UK - London-based production company Subfrantic is currently in the midst of a gruelling 60 date UK tour with Joe McElderry. Playing a wide variety of venues, a Yamaha CL5 mixing system has helped to make the once impossible, possible.

Despite being best known from the modern medium of television singing and reality shows, X Factor winner McElderry's Set Your Soul Alive tour harks back to tours of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when acts would embark on seemingly never-ending national treks.

Criss-crossing the UK, from Billingham to Yeovil, Hastings to Weston-super-Mare, taking in dozens of other provincial venues, Yamaha and Dante technology means that the current tour is a very different proposition to those of the past.

"We did the preliminary dates in 2013 on a Yamaha M7CL-48ES at FOH and an LS9-32 on monitors, as restrictions on stage space and transport weight mea

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Chile - The South American Games (a.k.a. ODESUR Games or Juegos Sudamericanos) are a regional multi-sport event featuring competitors from across South America and organised by the South American Sports Organization. Starting 1978 in La Paz, Bolivia the event is staged every four years, and the last edition was in Santiago, Chile. The Games have featured an equivalent to the Olympic Flame since their inception: the South American Flame, which is relayed from Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, to the host city.

Lighting designer Luis Pastor is known to be a big MA fan. Therefore it was no wonder that he used two grandMA2 full-sizes, one grandMA2 light and four MA NPU (Network Processing Units) for the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 South American Games. "It was an extremely important event for Chile its government," said Pastor, "The challenge was tremendous as the setup had to be

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South Africa - After Electrosonic SA hosted the successful Hippo School in February 2014, the demand for Green Hippo Professional media servers has grown exponentially. Knowledge is power, and as the pool of Hippo knowledge grows so does the demand for servers.

Video walls and video projection are fast becoming the norm in productions, live shows and TV broadcasts; thus the need for a professional, reliable, and real-time media server for content playback and manipulation is rapidly on the increase. Large and small stages, and complicated and simple set-ups, can benefit greatly from the Hippotizer media servers' flexibility, functionality and ease-of-use. Furthermore, the Hippo range is vast and offers different hardware capabilities on the same software platform, which means there is a server for every budget and application.

The first orders for Green Hippo Professional medi

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UK - LightGeist, specialists in cloud-based audience engagement products for live music and sport events, has announced the appointment of Simon Hicks as director of software products. An experienced product development manager and software engineer within the industry, Hicks will be responsible for the continued development of software for LightGeist's future product roadmap.

Hicks gained experience as a software engineer with Carallon Limited, developing products for leading industry clients, before branching out into product management for Pharos Architectural Controls, where he later joined the board as technical director.

"I'm thrilled to have Simon come on board the team," says LightGeist CEO Liza Sutherland. "LightGeist has developed, and will continue to build, exciting new audience engagement products for live entertainment. Simon's talents in product d

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Sweden - As part of the 'by Light' project in Malmö, Sweden, Bo Andersson and Johan Moritz created the idea and artwork for a special installation on one of the city roundabouts in 2004. Now came the time to renovate the installation and Moritz called upon SGM to deliver the LED lighting.

Mikael Uddh from SGM Sweden suggested the LP-700 LED Pix as best fit for purpose, and so the installation comprised 20 cabinets with three LP-700 strings in each (a single string incorporates 56 RGB LED pixels in a chain measuring 6.75m and provides a pixel pitch of 120mm).

The concept for this installation is based on a scene from the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, where a man builds in a four-walled house turned inside out. Thus the door that people would be inclined to take into the house opens into a lawn with benches and pedestrian pathways.

Mikael

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On The South Bank - Arts Council England is to fund the lion's share of a £24m repair and maintenance programme for the Southbank Centre's music venues and gallery after warnings by English Heritage that restorative work "could not be further delayed". The Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery will benefit from work aimed at improving workshops and backstage areas, disabled access for audiences and artists and restoring building interiors to their original appearance.

ACE is to provide £16.7m - equivalent to 70% of the total cost - with the London venue intending to raise the remainder through trusts, philanthropists and audiences. The work had originally been announced in March last year and was planned as part of a larger, £120m redevelopment of the complex following significantly increased attendance numbers to the Thames-side comp

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