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On 19 October at a press conference held during the LDI show in Las Vegas, Martin Professional’s US subsidiary, Martin Professional Inc, presented its second annual Intelligent Lighting Technology Grant.

The company’s CEO, Troels Volver, presented the 2002 Grant to the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) Department of Theatre. On hand to accept the award on behalf of the university was Brackley Frayer, lighting designer and head of design/technology at UNLV. "The Grant will allow UNLV to teach students with state-of-the-art equipment and help to establish an Entertainment Engineering programme," he stated after the presentation. "Las Vegas is the centre for entertainment technology, thus we need our students involved in all aspects of lighting."

Former UNLV theatre students include Cirque de Soleil lighting director Jeanette Farmer and Emmy award-wi

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Tomcat’s second annual Las Vegas Motor School, held immediately after LDI 2002, was a major success for the company. Building on the popularity of the first class offered in Las Vegas in June 2001, the company enrolled over 40 participants for the two-day course. These received instruction on chain hoist motors by Don Dimitroff of Columbus McKinnon, fall protection lead by Morgan Neff of Mine Safety Appliances and truss theory taught by Keith Bohn from Tomcat USA. In other Tomcat training news, the annual four-day Tomcat Hoist and Rigging Workshop will be hosted by Tomcat USA in Midland, Texas on February 5-8, 2003.

(Ruth Rossington)

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Lighting companies trading on the Internet are being warned to keep a watchful eye after a number of businesses in the industry have seen their Internet traffic unlawfully directed to a rival’s website.

The warning comes from commercial law firm, Taylors, who successfully helped a leading Lancashire-based lighting manufacturer win a legal battle against their competitor who had unlawfully placed meta tags on their website so that customers searching for their rival’s products would be directed instead to their own. Further investigations by intellectual property lawyers at Taylors also revealed that the website contained 15 meta tags for other rivals’ sites.

Elaine Hurn, managing partner at Taylors said: "Some unscrupulous companies have been including meta tags giving the names of their competitors so that when the competitor's name is searched for, their own

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Soundcraft’s successful new multipurpose MH4 mixing desk is continuing to make an impact with the UK’s sound rental companies. Liverpool-based Adlib Audio is the latest rental company to purchase both 40- and 48-channel frame versions of the new console.

Fitted with four stereo mic/line inputs, the MH4 serves as either a dedicated front-of-house or monitor desk - or a combination of both - attributes which Adlib managing director Andy Dockerty had been seeking. The 48-channel desk went straight out with up-and-coming Liverpool band, The Coral, where colleague and sound engineer Dave Kay, was mixing at front-of-house. Andy Dockerty explained: "We are finding that in our marketplace - typically the 1,000-2,000 capacity venues - we need a reasonably high-spec desk in a relatively small footprint, which the engineers will be happy with. I liked Soundcraft’s Series 4,

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The Flightcase Warehouse and Q-Flightcases of Lisburn have formed a partnership to distribute their standard range of flightcases in Ireland. The new company will be called Flightcase Warehouse Ireland and will be based in Lisburn. Flightcase Warehouse managing director Steve Austin comments: "We know that the potential in Ireland is massive, but due to logistics and shipping costs, we are limited to what we can sell direct from the UK. According to our website statistics, we receive on average of 5000 hits per month from Ireland, indicating a need for an outlet in this region. Q-Flightcases are the perfect solution to this problem, and are well situated to cover the whole of Ireland."

Q-Flightcases co-director Joan Beggs adds: "At present those companies that take advantage of our local facilities, have mostly been interested in our specialized cases. Generally, for lar

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Sound Advice, the Music Industry Education Roadshow, kicked off its tour of the UK on Monday 21 October to a packed auditorium of eager young music students at The Brit School, the venue for the launch event.

The day, which began at 11am, was split into three seminars Can't Get You Out Of My Head - from the Song to the Recording; Help I Need Somebody - from the Concept to the Concert; Paid in Full - from Rights to Royalties. Panellists for the London seminars were Horace Trubridge, Andy East, Sharon Rose, Radio 1 star Steve Lamacq, and Blue Weaver for the creative panel; Howard Ricklow, Nick Kanaar, Martin Talbot, Peter Horrey, Jane Dyball and ex Dire Straits manager Ed Bicknell for the business seminar and Frances Lowe, Peter Horrey, Mark Jones, Jo Laverty, Malcolm Buckland and Jill Drew on the rights and royalties panel. Over 200 students joined industry professionals for the day of

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Proving that no job is too unusual, a Lighthouse LVP1010 LED video screen (10mm pixel pitch, 1000 nits of brightness) was supplied for a large pharmaceutical company, Pharmacia’s, recent staff forum. The 5x5 panel screen was supplied by AV Network, specialists in the hire and sale of technology presentation products. “The management of Pharmacia believe in strong, regular communications with its staff," explains AV Network director, Suzanne Atkins. "And to achieve this they hold regular staff forums for two-way open communications and updates." To keep the meeting informal, and to encourage interaction from the staff, the company wanted to keep the event in-house.

"Their offices have a large glass-ceilinged atrium, which they wanted to use for the forum," continues Atkins. "This gave us an area with very high ambient light. As we intended to ru

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Professional audio distributor, Rock Centrum, has completed a major indoor and outdoor installation in the Slovakian city of Martin. The company was approached by the city's mayor and a panel of architects to create a fitting audio system for a high profile new pedestrian area and the glass-sided ‘Millenium’ building within it. The open air space is dominated by 10 translucent columns, which project a light and sound show into the central square. An Allen & Heath GR1 three-output analogue zone mixer routes audio to the columns, which contain five Crown XLS series amplifiers and 10 Tannoy i8 AW all weather speakers. Delays are provided by a Digitech Studio Quad4 multi-effects processor.

Beyond the columns, the pedestrian area is overlooked by the suitably impressive Millenium bar. The building is divided into four independent zones, each fed by an output from an Allen & Heat

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Rising dance stars Kosheen have gone from touring pubs and clubs in a Transit van to playing the main stage at V2002 in just 18 months. This month, they embark on their first ever production tour with a Martin Audio, XTA, Midas and Sennheiser system supplied by Capital Sound. The nine-date UK tour runs from October 10-25 with the final night at Brixton Academy.

Capital Sound’s Paul Timmins explains: "We supported them and provided monitors on a 12-week tour last year when they were on their way up, and they’ve come a very long way very quickly. A year and a half ago were still going around in a van and now they’re taking out a full production including sound, lighting and projection."

This autumn’s one-truck tour production features a Midas Heritage 3000 for FOH with engineer Simon Thomas and a Midas XL4 on monitors, mixed by Dave Lee. 14 cabinets as

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Now fewer than 300 Arrisun Event 575 Daylight Pars were on duty at the British International Motor Show - all hired by north-east London-based Static Light. Some 200 of these were featured on the spectacular Vauxhall stand - mounted on 50 x 50 GP truss to create a dramatic effect in front of a Dataton Watchout soft-blend backdrop.

The ballasts - power factor corrected, dimmable, and controllable via DMX - were stacked in groups of three in specially made 19" racks. Andrew Mama, a director of Static Light, said that Marshall Design, who designed the Vauxhall display, had insisted on using Arri. "These are ideal for motor shows because of their fast set-up, advanced optics and the fact they have a dichroic glass reflector behind the light. This produces an even field of light - rather than the polished aluminium which degrades quickly."

He says that unlike other luminar

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One of the largest concentrations of its kind in the world, a record-breaking number of 26 BSS Jellyfish has been ordered for installation in the leafy backwater of Bagshot in Surrey. Installation Technologies, the Oxfordshire-based audio-visual installation company, is masterminding the ultimate personal entertainment network for guests at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, part of the Exclusive Hotels group.

Winner of the AA's prestigious Hotel of the Year 2002 award, Pennyhill Park is currently constructing a lavishly appointed spa and health centre. Adam Bloch of Installation Technologies has designed an entertainment system which delivers multi-channel choice to every fitness room and treatment suite, giving guests the ability to pick their own music, ambience and volume preferences using the Jellyfish interface.

The heart of the network is two BSS Soundweb 9088ii DSP engines, with four

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A year after the devastating events of 11 September, 2001, light is gleaming again in the Winter Garden, the centrepiece public space of the World Financial Center complex. The vaulted glass atrium was severely damaged during the collapse of the towers, and the lighting system, including speciality entertainment luminaires and architectural-control functionality, was destroyed. Miraculously, people were evacuated in time to prevent injuries. As part of the $50m renovation, a new glass façade archway has replaced the footbridge which led to the World Trade Center. High within the arches of the new glass ceiling is a state-of-the-art lighting rig and ETC control system.

Todd Berling Design Inc was asked in November 2001 by Brookfield Properties to assess the damage to the venue's theatrical systems - rigging, lighting and audio. "Our original walkthrough was overwhelming. We got to

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500 guests attended this year’s UK AV Industry Awards Ceremony on 16 October; and the event attracted record numbers of entries. One of the most hotly contested categories was Installation of the Year, which included five finalists instead of the usual three. Electrosonic, which was involved in three of the final projects, emerged as the overall winner of Installation of the Year for ‘Thinktank’, the Birmingham Museum of Science and Discovery. The other finalists were Williams F1 Conference Center and Grand Prix Museum; the Vanco Lab Presentation Environment; the Sheraton Frankfurt 270 degree AV installation; and The Big Picture at Imperial War Museum North.

The principal criteria applied to the judging process were evidence of innovation and company performance, coherent strategies and objectives, capable implementation, the appropriate use of technologies and creati

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Contracted by Unusual Services, Fourth Phase London has paid yet another visit to the Royal Albert Hall. As the lights went down on Wednesday 16 October, the London landmark became the venue for 'Whip Craic', an evening of music from the worlds of rock, pop, classical, opera, comedy and theatre hosted by the Countryside Alliance.

The Countryside Alliance promotes the interests of rural people, including all countryside pursuits and field sports, sensible wildlife management and wider countryside concerns such as employment and environments. As all of the £200,000 raised by this event will be used to support the organisation's work, it was essential that the evening of music and entertainment made an impact on the audience.

Fourth Phase supplied a variety of MAC 500s and 600s and a Wholehog II control desk to supplement the existing house rig, plus crew. Creating a lighting design to

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Australian company Jands Electronics, the well-known manufacturer of a leading range of lighting consoles and dimmers for the entertainment industry, is the latest manufacturer to join the Art-Net Alliance. The purpose of the Alliance is to promote the wide-spread adoption of the Art-Net Ethernet Standard. The Art-Net Alliance with the inclusion of Jands is now truly a global network.

From their Australian base Jands supports a global customer network. "Supporting Art-Net will ensure that we maintain our position as a supplier of leading edge products. The features offered by Art-Net will ensure our users continue to have access to the latest lighting data transmission tools," Paul Mulholland, managing director of Jands told us. "We look forward to implementing Art-Net in future generations of our products."

The Art-Net tools package continues to grow on a weekly

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JBL Professional is excited to announce the first international installation of Precision Directivity Series loudspeakers. Vodafone Arena, a premiere sports and entertainment venue in Melbourne, was recently renovated with PD speakers, receiving a very positive response. The 10,800-seat Vodafone Arena features retractable and removable seats to accommodate various events including tennis, basketball, live music concerts and a velodrome for bicycle races. A retractable roof, which takes ten minutes to fully open or close, allows the venue to be transformed from an indoor arena to an outdoor venue. The roof presented an understandable challenge when designing the sound system. Since the system could not be mounted in the centre of the arena, the catwalk running around the perimeter of the open roof was utilized.

The original sound system, consisting of a six-element circular array of 15&

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Artistic Licence has announced that Stage Electrics is now stocking and distributing Artistic Licence products. Stage Electrics’ network of 10 branches covering the UK will offer the full range of Artistic Licence products. Artistic Licence sees the strong service ethics and excellent technical support offered by Stage Electrics as matching their own. These were important factors in appointing Stage Electrics as a distributor.

Linda Moore of Stage Electrics says it’s the innovative nature of the product range which led to them to take on Artistic Licence distribution, commenting: "The DMX, RDM and Ethernet tools provided by Art-Net will allow for leading-edge technology to be used in our installations."

(Lee Baldock)

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The resources of Creative Technology and Dimension Audio were combined at this year’s Paris Motor Show, where their integrated technology created presentation media, IT infrastructure and audio playback solutions for a number of exhibits. While CT debuted their newly-acquired Barco SLM G8 projectors on the Lexus stand, the centrepiece was the Ford stand, where Kylie Minogue helped launch the new StreetKa.

CT used Dimension Audio as the sound supplier. The latter, working for Imagination, provided a system to fulfil the requirements of sound designer, John Del Nero. The sound source delivery was all from hard disk and the automated show was played out through Dimension’s front-line d&b sound rig. Dimension also provided editing facilities in the form of their Syntrillium Cool Edit Pro suite.

CT’s project manager, Darren Alexander, was overseeing the performance of th

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D.A.S. Audio sound reinforcement systems have been installed at ‘Dinopolis’, one of the worlds most modern theme parks, based on the age of the dinosaurs. Located in Teruel, Spain, the themed entertainment of Dinopolis aims to shed light on the age of the dinosaurs through the use of animated replicas, special attractions and live sketches evolving around the study of palaeontology.

Dinopolis, is divided into various halls, each with its specific subject matter, such as the Hall of the Sea, Hall of the Mammals or the Paleontology Workshop. Besides the now famous ‘Time Traveler’ attraction, which places the visitor in a special all-terrain vehicle for a ride through the origins of life on our planet, two new attractions have been added. ‘Saurus Park’, aimed at keeping the very young visitors busy and ‘T-Rex’, featuring a life-sized Tyranno

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Le Mark continues to experience a year of success. Returning from a successful launch by Apollo Design Technology of Le Mark’s PLASA 2002 double award-winning product GEL-TAK Filter Fix at LDI Las Vegas, the Cambridgeshire-based company has found that they have been short-listed for a ‘Huntingdonshire Business Award’ in the category of ‘Spirit of Ingenuity’.

"The award is presented to the company and its staff rather then for an individual product", said managing director Stuart Gibbons. "We are extremely thrilled and honoured to even be shortlisted," said Gibbons, "being based in the high-tech county of Cambridgeshire so close to ‘silicon fen’, we are aware of the high calibre of competition within our catchment area."

(Lee Baldock)

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Some of the biggest names in television gathered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 15 for the ITV 2002 National Television Awards. But everyone in the packed auditorium had a ring-side seat - thanks to the presence of several Screenco big screen displays. The main backdrop was a 40sq.m 25mm LED screen, upstage centre, reinforced by two 13 x 8 sq. metre 15mm IMAG displays, situated left and right of the stage. Screenco also provided a plasma display for the backstage press area.

While the centre screen was sent a feed comprising of stage close-ups, the flanking screens and plasma display took its feed from the live television mix. Hosts Trevor McDonald and Tess Daley presented the awards, screened on ITV1, while this year ITV2 also broadcast exclusive coverage from backstage and the glamorous after-show party. Graham Filmer, director and general manager at Screenco commented

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Taunton-based rental company APR Audio has just invested in an impressive 60-box X-Line system from Electro-Voice, complete with 14 racks of the new Electro-Voice P3000RL DSP remote-controlled amplifiers, all supplied by Shuttlesound. Following the product's UK PLASA launch, this is the very first remote amplifier sale in the UK, and the first worldwide that will be supporting a stadium-sized X-Line system. In addition, APR has also purchased a 40-input Legend 3000 supplied direct from the Midas factory in Kidderminster.

For Andy Reed of APR Audio, an existing X-Array user, the decision to invest in X-Line was straightforward. "I had been looking to increase my inventory for some time, and as an existing X-Array user, my first port of call when looking for a new system was naturally Electro-Voice. I was invited to go and see how the X-Line system performed on Rod Stewart, and fran

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The Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre in Scotland is about to complete a one-year, £18m expansion and redevelopment project. The venue’s two existing halls have been expanded to provide conference capacities of 2,000 and 500 respectively, while two new 700-capacity multi-purpose suites have been added.

GB Audio of Edinburgh won the contact to supply and install sound systems in these four spaces. The brief was to deliver consistent, high definition sound throughout the complex. To further complicate the requirements, each individual suite has the ability to divide into two independent spaces, meaning that the sound too would have to divide down and even operate in different directions if required. GB Audio achieved this by deploying a BSS Audio Soundweb DSP system controller, which offers instant recall of preset EQ and delay settings at the touch of a button. A total of 4

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As part of its ongoing expansion plan, Gekko Events has announced the creation of the brand new Gekko Effects, a lighting and effects division. Gekko Effects will specialise in supplying flame lights and small effects for the full spectrum of live events - from corporate meetings and permanent venues, to live production and parties. Laura Dodds is responsible for the management and business development of the division. During her 10 years in the industry, Dodds has racked up a broad lighting experience, from working on blue-chip projects such as Party in the Park, Eurovision and The Royal Variety Performance, as well as Ricky Martin and The Spice Girls tours.

Founder and MD of Gekko Events Ltd, Kristin Magnuson, comments: "The creation of Gekko Effects will participate in positioning Gekko as a major brand within the events industry. Laura’s skills will allow Gekko Effects t

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  5. beyerdynamic installs Audia system at Gleneagles Hotel
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