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Electrosonic’s tradition of creating giant high-resolution electronic images continues with the completion of a 180sq.m display in Beijing, China. The China Millennium Monument is China’s memorial building to the Year 2000. It is a grand structure, occupying a total floor space of about 30,000sq.m. Its Century Wide-Screen Projection Hall houses an impressive 56-screen (30m x 6m) projection videowall. Measure Scientific of Beijing was responsible for the design and integration of the system which uses Sanyo projectors and locally-manufactured screens controlled by an Electrosonic Vector image system.

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Italian lighting manufacturer Clay Paky has unveiled plans for a major new headquarter facility, close to its current base in Pedrengo.

The new HQ not only represents a major investment for the company (you don’t want to know how many noughts were on the end of all those liras), but also a new chapter in what has been one of the major success stories of our industry. And the timing is perfectly cued, for it’s 25 years since Pasquali Quadri first founded Clay Paky, in 1976.

Over the years, the company has grown to be one of the major players in the lighting market and whilst much of that is down to its roots in the club sector, recent years have seen Clay Paky diversify into the wider arenas of TV, theatre, touring and architectural lighting. Central to all this has been technical innovation - GoldenScan did much to establish the company; more recently the launch of new

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Cambridge-based Brähler ICS has provided a new microphone system for the courtrooms of the Patent Office in London, as part of a sound system overhaul. Two main areas had to be addressed: firstly, a modern microphone management system was required to make proceedings run more smoothly; secondly, it was vital that this system was integrated with an element that made it highly versatile. Both these needs were met by the supply and installation of Brähler’s Automic system and their Congress Data System Virtual Audio Network, CDS-VAN for short. The former provides the overall infrastructure. The latter endows it with great flexibility and eliminates much of the peripheral hardware normally associated with such projects. Installation also included replacing the existing PA system.

A carefully concealed and fixed cabling network was put into each courtroom for the microphones. And Br

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Lighting Technology has announced that Valiant Lamps has moved to the Group's New Malden, Surrey Location as part of an expansion and reorganisation programme. In addition, Valiant is already networked to take advantage of the Group's new Corby National Distribution Centre where a new computerised internal order processing system has been installed to mastermind and speed up deliveries to its customers across the UK and Europe. The new address for Valiant Lamps is: 4 Shannon Commercial Centre, Beverley Way, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 4PT, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8949 3070 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8395 3072

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Three European entertainment industry veterans have announced the formation of Ground Zero BV, which they claim to be ‘the first system integrator and show control specialist company in Holland’. The founders of Ground Zero are Sierk Janszen, Rutger van Dijk and Reind Brackman, all well known figures in the worldwide entertainment industry. The company’s main working area will be North-Western Europe and Spain.

Sierk Janszen has worked as applications manager at Avenger Systems in Belgium for the last six years after he had worked as a sound-engineer for several theatre-companies in Holland. Rutger van Dijk has been the manager of Vari-Lite Production Services Amsterdam since it establishment, before which he worked as technical production manager on many musical productions, Cirque du Soleil Europe and Focus Showequipment. Finally, Reind Brackman is the owner and fou

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On May 3rd, Mass Audio Visual of Burlington, Massachusetts, unveiled the new EAW KF760 Line Array sound system. The first in the world to own this product, massAV entertained 125 industry guests at the renowned concert facility on Boston's Waterfront, The Fleet Boston Pavilion. Jason Geshelin, senior audio engineer for massAV, designed the new system for even coverage in the 5,000-seat tented-facility. The system comprised 12 KF 760 cabinets, four KF 761 downfill modules and eight SB 1000 bass units. 100,000 watts of power was provided from Crest 9001 and 8002 amplifiers, with processing from DBX 480 and 480R units. Front-of-house mixing duties were carroed out on a Crest GTX console, with a Ramsa 840 used for monitors.

The afternoon featured entertainment from the Berklee "Tower of Power" Ensemble and singer/songwriter Brian Alex. Brad Berger, FOH engineer for the ensemble

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The LA Dodgers are enjoying a new sound system for the 2001 season, which opened with 53,154 Dodger fans witnessing a 1 - 0 win over Milwaukee Brewers. The new sound system enhanced the event from the first note of Barry Manilow’s national anthem to the last call by public address announcer Mike Carlucci. Acoustic Dimensions, project led by Steve Shull, spent the end of the 2000 season going through fan surveys and conducting interviews with team members and management to research the challenges of the original system, then fast-tracked the solution during the off-season. The new design includes replacement of the old central cluster with an EAW KF900-based system. New Meyer MSL 4s make up the left and right field effects clusters, which allow ping-pong and panning of sound effects or organ music across the stadium. Additional loudspeakers provide coverage to the outfield bleacher

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Federal Signal, the leading supplier of public address and voice alarm (PA/VA) systems, is hosting a new summer roadshow to highlight the significance of British Standards for PA/VA systems. The initiative is aimed at consultants and specifiers from across the PA/VA and fire protection industry who need to know more about the issue of operating standards and why it is important to use systems with BS5839 compliance.

The guest speaker will be Doug Edworthy, formerly of Millbank Electronics and a leading expert in systems engineering, marketing and quality management. He has been running his own consultancy since 1994. Jason Hatswell, commerial sales manager at Federal Signal, said: "The road show will explain why British Standards are so important to those responsible for product specification, design and installation. We will also show Federal Signal’s equipment and explain

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Fourth Phase Production Arts supplied a BP6 Gold Pani projector to artist Joanna Jones to realise her dramatic projected work on Dover’s famous white cliffs over the Easter weekend. The project was part of the Arts Council’s Year of The Artist initiative. Joanna’s idea was to combine the structures and textures of a cliff face with the structures and textures of a painted layer created by herself into a huge outdoor abstract painting. The painted layer was photographed as a 6 cm X 6 cm transparency by Ute Schendel which was then produced as a large format Cibachrome Pani slide by Wyatt Enever of DHA. Production Arts Emma Hutchison and Dominic Airs visited the site and ran a camera obscura to establish the lens needed, the exact size the artwork should be and the optimum positioning of the projector. They used a 22cm lens and a throw distance of 50 metres to produce a 35

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Navigator Systems recently presented Pascale Lecomte of Britannia Row with a Harrods food hamper for taking part in a research and development project linked to the company’s Hire Track Eclipse rental management software. Britannia Row, which has been using Eclipse since 1999, was chosen at random from a number of companies who participated. Navigator will use the results from the findings to further develop the software.

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Touring, festival and corporate event lighting rental house Fineline have become the first UK stockists of Tomcat’s new Extra Heavy Duty trussing. Fineline’s initial purchase of nearly 300ft of the super-strength truss was prompted by the demands of a recent event at Westpoint Arena in Exeter for Warwick Corporate Events, for which Fineline constructed a complete 80m x 30m x 11m high pitched-roof tented structure within the Westpoint venue - using the new trussing to form the topmost span of the apex. The 80m run of Extra Heavy Duty served as the main truss run. Below that, further out from the centre each side were two runs of lighter GP trussing (also Tomcat), and below these - still further out from the centre - were two runs of Trilite lightweight trussing, at a height of approximately 4m. All three layers of trussing were bridled together with additional runs of Trilite

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A Celestion CX system has been specified for one of Copenhagen’s most popular venues for private functions, the ‘Sealand’, an old ferry permanently moored in the heart of the city. This large vessel, capable of seating 700-800 people for dinner, is in demand for all kinds of private rentals, parties, concerts and fashion shows. Its proprietor Skanlines is jointly owned by the Danish and German governments. Musiktronic, the Copenhagen-based audio supplier, has recently kitted out the huge interior space of the ship with a new front-of-house PAsystem, featuring proprietary Musiktronic cabinets (all using Celestion drivers), and four delay channels, each using a pair of Celestion CX1220s. The system is controlled by a Yamaha 01V mixing console. The Sealand system has an unusual feature; the levels of both the front-of-house and the delay positions can be controlled from a

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Late March in London saw several industry organisations come together to contribute to an evening of presentations, the theme of which was Entertainment Lighting and its Influences. Members of the Society of Light & Lighting (SLL), the Institute of Lighting Engineers (ILE) and the Association of Lighting Designers (ALD) were present to hear several speakers outline their own particular experiences.

Peter Phillipson of Future Group Lighting Design talked about the differences between the disciplines of theatre and television lighting, compared to architectural lighting. To illustrate his point, he demonstrated the differences between a number of lighting fixtures. He also went on to discuss the critical role of the lighting programmer and introduced Stuart Porter, who had worked alongside LD Andrew Bridge on the production of Aida at the Royal Albert Hall. Dave Isherwood of The Moving L

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An ongoing technical refurbishment at the Salisbury District Council-owned City Hall, which recently saw motorised hoists and rigging improvements bringing it up to Health & Safety standard, has now seen the venue upgrade to new Strand LD90 digital dimmer racks. While the previous analogue dimmer system sat exposed in the gallery, the conversion of a storage room has provided a dedicated area for the six new racks, which offer 144 channels of 2.5kW dimming (with RCD earth leakage breaker options on the power blocks). At the same time ten Strand SL 15/30 Zooms and eight Strand Cantata F soft-edge fresnel lanterns have been added to the lighting rig.

Work at the 953 (seated)-capacity concert venue was carried out by Edinburgh-based Northern Light, who successfully tendered for the specification prepared by technical consultants, Theatretech, and supplied all the Strand equipment. The Sco

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Hull-based public address specialists, Galloway Electronics, proved the power of an effective website this month when they completed a contract for Indian Ocean Tuna - a subsidiary of Heinz - in the Seychelles. "I turned on the computer one morning and there was the enquiry posted on our website," confesses finance director Brian Galloway. "We had just started to export, and a job right in the middle of the Indian Ocean couldn’t have provided us with a better start." The family-owned business has been operating for 20 years, and for much of that time the company has been dealing with TOA Electronics, and fitting their public address, voice evacuation and CCTV systems as approved installers. Thus when the canning factory stated that they needed a factory-wide public address system, Galloway didn't have to look further than the TOA catalogue.

Indian Ocean Tuna f

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The 46th Eurovision Song Contest at Denmark’s national stadium, Parken, featured one of the largest automated lighting rigs ever assembled for a single show. Danish lighting rental company SeeLite A/S, who recently took over Martin Danmark’s rental division, supplied all the lighting for Eurovision 2001 (subhired through rental company ProCon of Germany). The package included nearly 900 automated, computer-controlled fixtures including over 700 of Martin’s most successful and popular lights, MAC luminaries. The massive rig also included over 1000 conventional luminaries - all in all a 4.2 million watt lighting system. The Eurovision Song Contest has featured Martin lighting for the past several years, including in Israel in 1999 and Sweden in 2000. By comparison, last year’s Eurovision show in Stockholm incorporated just 300 computer-controlled fixtures. Set-up be

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New Malden, Surrey is the new home for Direct Lighting, the latest addition to the Lighting Technology Group of companies. Established over 10 years and under the leadership of directors Ian Moodie and Steve Copping, Direct Lighting is well-known in the industry for the distribution of light sources and related products to independent retailers and commercial end users. The company is already networked to take full advantage of the Group's new National Distribution Centre in Corby where a new computerised internal order processing system has been installed to mastermind and speed up deliveries to its customers. The new address for Direct Lighting is: 4 Shannon Commercial Centre, Beverley Way, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 4PT, UK.

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Two Allen & Heath mixers, the ML5000 and Xone:464, have recently found a home in top Japanese venue Club Yellow. The club hosts a variety of nights, from hard house to soul. Mr Kikuchi, sound manger at Yellow, explained what they were looking for: "We needed a top quality mixer for live mixing and overall control of sound at the club. The ML5000 provided this, at a great price." The 32-channel version of the ML5000 dual function FOH/monitor mixer met his requirements, due to the flexibility provided by its 16 auxes, eight audio groups and eight VCA groups. In addition to the ML5000, Yellow also needed a dedicated DJ mixer for its prominent house, techno and garage nights. The Allen & Heath Xone:464 was chosen and has so far found great favour. Naoko Sugano of Onkyo Tokki, the company that supplied the mixers, believes that the choice of new DJ console at the venue was determine

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Zero 88 has appointed Rolight Theatertechniek BV as a European dealer. The company, based in The Netherlands, currently distributes throughout the country via six dealers, Lichtpunt Theatertechniek in Groningen, Pulcinella in Arnhem, Aukes Theatertechniek in Amsterdam, Aveq in Den Haag, Rouvoet and Stagelight who are both based in Den Bosch. Mark Beens of Rolight commented: "The market place is very interested in Zero 88 products thanks to their ease of use and competitive price." To increase Zero 88's presence in the Dutch marketplace, Rolight have organised a dealer meeting at the beginning of June. Tim Burt, Zero 88's product manager will be visiting the event to lend a helping hand with product demonstrations.

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This month, DHA Lighting has sold its 1000th Digital Light Curtain. The company has supplied seven pitching six lamp Digital Light Curtains (DLC) and three standard six lamp units for the Australian production of Mamma Mia, already hugely successful in London, Toronto and the USA, taking DLC sales over the 1000 mark. Due to preview from 31 May at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, with the premiere on 9 June, rumour has it that Mamma Mia is scheduled to run until 3 November, though there have been unconfirmed reports that the show may move to Sydney.

What is now DHA's DLC began its life as a prototype Light Curtain produced for the English National Opera's 1976 production of Dalibor and in 1978 24 Light Curtains were used in Evita to create the innovative production concept of a 'white out' effect. The first motorised Digital Light Curtains were installed on Miss Saigon in New York and t

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An Allen and Heath GL4000 has recently been installed in top West Midlands live venue 'The Shed'. Richard Willis of Showcom Audio, the company that supplied the equipment, said the nature of the venue meant they needed a: "Sensible board for sensible money and lots of facilities." The GL4000 is certainly that. A 10 aux, 8 group dual function FoH/Monitor mixer, it is entirely at home in any situation and offers complete control to a single engineer. Its 8 mute groups with 128 MIDI mute snapshots further support the versatility of the console. The console is at the heart of a complete sound system refit that includes six decks of Nexo Alpha E loudspeakers, PS-15 monitors, Camco Vortex series amplification and Klark Teknik signal processing throughout. Since its installation last month, the GL4000 has been used regularly in the 500 capacity venue by a wide variety of visiting acts

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This year’s PLASA will see the future of automated lighting and the application of high-powered video projection, move a step forward with the launch of High End Systems’ new product, Catalyst. Developed for HES by English design company, Wynne Wilson Gottelier (WWG), the alpha version of Catalyst created a considerable stir at the Showtech Exhibition in Berlin where it was soft-launched earlier this month.

Mounted on the front of a Barco ELM R12, a 12,000 ANSI lumens output, triple-DMD video projector, Catalyst allows an image to be moved smoothly and positioned accurately, time after time, within a global envelope. As it is video-based, Catalyst allows truly unlimited colour mixing, with a selection of masks that act as framing shutters or overlays on video clips. The system is delivered with hundreds of gobo patterns, that can again be overlaid, including the entire DHA

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Just days before previews commenced, Thelma Holt’s new production of Noel Coward’s Semi Monde had a weighty problem. The main scenic element, essentially a large hemisphere built of steel frame and plaster, remained resolutely on terra firma. Summit Steel effected a solution, but it was not just a question of the appropriate support. The set-builders had estimated a weight of 2000 lbs for the hemisphere, calculating that it would be flown by strapping eight counter weight fly bars together. However, when all eight cradles were fully loaded, the structure refused to defy gravity. "Fortunately, one of the production crew had worked at the Albery Theatre where we had solved a similar flying problem for that theatre’s production of Baby Doll," said Chris Walker of Summit Steel. "A frantic Monday morning phone call to tell us of their nightmare m

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Richard Martin Lighting have recently purchased a further 20 Clay Paky Stage Zoom 1200s for their hire stock. This purchase means that RML now have a grand total of 100 units, which are regularly used in TV shows, theatres, exhibitions and several other applications. As Steve Wells, RML’s operations manager enthuses: "The Stage Zooms are very powerful and versatile projectors and increasing our stock was a natural choice, due to their high popularity and demand."
  1. Geckos in Southwark Cathedral
  2. Non-Stop Fog from AC Lighting
  3. Playlight Auction - Tuesday 22 May
  4. High Hit Rate for Autograph
  5. Artistic Touch in Plymouth
  6. Non-Stop Fog from AC Lighting
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