UK - On 15 November 2003, Kylie Minogue launched her latest CD 'Body Language' at an exclusive concert in London's Carling Apollo Hammersmith, backed by a breathtaking design of Barco ILite 10 and MiPIX LED displays. The show, aptly named 'Money Can't Buy' and with no tickets being offered for sale, was strictly by invitation only. The show cost £1m and featured costumes designed by Helmut Lang, Chanel and Balenciaga, alongside state-of-the-art Barco LED displays totalling 100sq.m, which served as backdrop to Kylie's high energy performance.

The LED display and backdrop, supplied by Barco Rental Partner XL Video, consisted of a 20sq.m ILite 10 indoor LED display surrounded by 80sq.m of Barco's revolutionary MiPIX LED blocks. The Barco ILite 10 indoor LED and MiPIX displays were used as one seamless display on which high resolution graphics and animations were shown throughout t

UK - Creative Technology has followed its move to a new 54,000sqft facility in Crawley by confirming the purchase of three Vista Montage processing systems. Two of these will be deployed in the USA and the third at the company's new UK headquarters.

Already featured by the company on the Mercedes stand at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Montage will allow CT to expand on its already advanced multi-image capability, by offering sophisticated high quality screen content manipulation.

CT chief executive Graham Andrews said: "Creative Technology continually strives to not only keep up with our clients' imaginations, but to exceed their expectations. We've pushed existing technology to its limits and now, with Montage, we'll be able to provide the sophisticated alpha-channel based keying, the DVE-like PiP moves and the pixel-perfect resolution that our clients demand. With this syst

UK - Top London club fabric has made a major lighting investment with Coemar UK and its sister company, Lighting Effects Distribution. Part of a systematic upgrade at the venue, iSpot 575 moving heads, iCyc 250s, ProSpot 250s and a variety of LED-based products will add to the new kinetic energy in Rooms 1, 2 and 3 as a result of a new design from Dave Parry's technology team at the club.

The new equipment is predominantly for Room 2. "The room is essentially a black box, but I wanted to put a bit more focus onto the lasers," explained Parry. "The room contains a massive block of colour and we have used Coemar iCyc 250s as an architectural backdrop." At the same time the club has used six Thomas Pixel Par 87s from Lighting Effects Distribution to highlight the structural arches and create an extra dimension, along with a pair of Coemar iSpot 575s and CF as a

UK - For the third year, DPL supplied Christmas lighting Portsmouth Historic Dockyard's annual 'A Festival of Christmas' international fair. The centrepiece of the show was HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson's famous battleship, aboard which he died during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The Victory - still UK's oldest commissioned warship, and now a major heritage attraction - had its lighting boosted for the event with five Studio Due City Colour architectural colour changing luminaries, which were located on the dockside.

DPL's Darren Parker also added a Space Flower on the rear deck of the ship, positioned carefully so the twisting split beams shot through the vessel's masts and elaborate rigging systems. A large Christmas tree sat on the dockside in front of the Victory, decorated with multi-coloured festoons, sourced and supplied by DPL specially for this project.

(Lee Baldock

Australia - Australian lighting control manufacturer, LSC Lighting Systems, has recently released a new website. The new site has been designed from the outset, the company says, to provide greatly improved navigation, higher resolution graphics and include more up to date product information, including a 'Distributor Only' section.

As the site is primarily technical, no fancy graphics or videos have been utilized, helping in faster loading time. Most product information is available at the click of only one or two button presses. The product section is comprehensive and provides most commonly asked for downloads. The new Help Centre provides the latest Software releases and houses the Product Discussion Forums.

(Lee Baldock)

UK - Direct Imports (UK) group and sister company New Horizons, whom jointly have been supplying and distributing leading brands of sound and lighting equipment to the international dj and nightclub industry for over 25 years, have announced the formation of Fametrack, a new division of Direct Imports (UK) which will offer a one-stop supply of services to the install, touring, studio, broadcast and AV sectors from its North-London base.

Supplying equipment from a number of pro audio and lighting manufacturers, the company says it will offer: " . . . an efficient and helpful design, demo and supply service from a dedicated team of industry professionals."

(Lee Baldock)

South East Asia - Sennheiser Electronic Asia has just been appointed as the L-Acoustics Distributor to represent the whole L-Acoustics range of products for South East Asian countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

Michel Brouard, L-Acoustics' director of sales, said: "This exciting new step in South East Asia comes after negotiations with S. F. Ho, director of Sennheiser Electronic Asia. Looking back at the achievements of Sennheiser Electronic Asia, we are confident that they are able to cover Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. They have connections in all these countries, as well as others, and a very good team of qualified people, all specialized in their own field of expertise and market."

Sennheiser Electronic Asia was founded in November 1992 with the target of satisfying the special expectations of the differe

Australia - Melbourne's Crown Casino Atrium has been transformed into a massive automated Christmas spectacular. Stage One Promotions, Bytecraft and Lightmoves have worked together to put in place the largest animatronic Christmas display in the world, with Production Manager Sam Redston co-ordinating their efforts.

Using the well-known Atrium at Melbourne's Crown Casino, Crown's creative services manager, Christian Wagner, worked with John Kerr of Stage One Promotions to design the annual display, while Bytecraft's Special Effects department were charged with overseeing the lightshow, which was programmed by Megafun's Keith Tucker. The centrepiece of this year's display is the giant clock, which is suspended below the Atrium's crystals, and is lowered and raised during the show. The clock face also tells patrons when the next show is due to start, so it had to attract attention

UK - Three high-resolution Lighthouse LVP1650 LED video screens were in action for the half a million rugby fans who flooded central London to witness the England team parade the World Cup on 8 December. As the team's open top double-decker buses threaded through the crowds at Piccadilly Circus, the giant 'Coca-Cola' screen towering over Eros, installed in September, showed footage from the cup final and messages of congratulations to the team from 'Coca-Cola', a major sponsor of the tournament.

The panoramic screen, which wraps around the façade of a building overlooking the Circus, was designed by Lighthouse to be capable of interactive video, with a satellite-linked control room feed that allows real-time live video to be delivered direct to the screen from a remote location. Measuring 32m wide by 6.6m high, the screen is made up of 88 standard LVP1650 panels and 170 bespoke

UK - Andy Reed of APR Audio took personal control of the huge Battersea Fireworks concert last month, using a 32-channel Midas Venice desk to mix one of the biggest events of its kind in London. The annual fireworks display, held on the nearest weekend to Guy Fawkes Night (5th November), attracts 70,000 people to Battersea Park in south London. APR Audio, in collaboration with Major Tom, supplied audio for the event, providing an ElectroVoice X-Line system.

Each side of the soundstage, two large cherry-pickers each supporting a hang of eight Xvls three-way line-array enclosures. Below each crane were ground-stacked eight x X-Line subs. EV's Precision Series remote-controlled amplifiers, the P3000RL, 24 units in all, powered the system. With the pyrotechnics triggered by time code, the music was all playback - with the exception of a saxophone soloist who, using an EV RE-20 wire

UK - Fuzion has supplied 64 Symetrix 422 AGC Levellers to BBC Technology, the wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC which hosts and distributes content for the BBC online, notably the BBC's award-winning website, www.bbc.co.uk.

When the BBC commissioned BBC Technology to design and build the infrastructure for the BBC's own website, the brief was both straightforward and demanding: design it to exacting broadcast quality standards so that all BBC online content is available to a global audience 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Today, the BBC web site is one of the world's largest public content sites, the second-largest streaming site and one of the most successfully visited sites on the internet.

Virtually all the encoding of the BBC's online content is now processed through Symetrix 422 Stereo AGC Levellers, stereo automatic gain controllers, which also act as peak l

Worldwide - XL Video has supplied Muse's lighting and video designer Oli Metcalf with video production equipment for their current "Absolution" world tour, which is among the most visually innovative tours to kick off in 2003.

For control of the video, Metcalf is using a Catalyst digital media server run from his WholeHog II console. Additionally he has six camera inputs - three Toshiba 'lipstick' devices, two Sony surveillance cameras on the drums and a handheld DV cam, operated throughout the show by the band's video co-ordinator Tom Kirk. These are also fed into the Macintosh, where Metcalf manipulates and adds them to the overall mix as he would lighting fixtures.

The video feeds are output to three upstage LED screens - hung in portrait format - on motors that track in and out vertically to different positions through the show. The screens are made up from 82 pa

The Netherlands - At the end of August, over 3,500 visitors attended the Binnenhof Festival in The Hague, which is fast becoming one of Europe's cultural highlights. As in previous years, the organizers of this multi-cultural event chose to rely upon respected local sound company and EV Europool member, Aveq Show & Theatre Facilities, to provide the sound, and Robert van Aalst, Aveq's sound engineer, once again put his faith in an X-Array from Electro-Voice.

The Binnenhof, which is ringed by masterpieces of Dutch 12th and 13th century architecture such as the Ridderzaal, may be one of the most beautiful squares in all Europe, but it also has a reputation for being an extremely problematic venue acoustically. Axel Nagtegaal, head of EVI's Dutch partner, Electric Audio BV, is intimately acquainted with the Binnenhof's quirks, having worked on many different productions there: &quo

UK - NiteLites, based in North Shields, is enjoying increased success since purchasing a new JBL Vertec rig and eight Crown MA-5002VZ amplifiers. Gordon Reay and James Michael Moore run NiteLites, which aims to offer a flexible production package serving a variety of events including outdoor classical concerts, air shows, exterior architectural floodlighting, musical firework displays, and amateur dramatics to rock and pop concert support.

"Crown was recommended to us as the optimal amplification partner for the Vertec system," says James Michael Moore. The system has been out with a variety of acts, reflecting the current interest in '80s hits, including Curiosity Killed the Cat, as well as Herbie Hancock and Osibisa. Gordon Reay: "We're very pleased with this investment, it's a useful tool that is meeting our needs and pleasing our clients."

(Sarah Rushto

UK - One of London's most famed buildings, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, has installed QSC amplifiers and loudspeakers into its revered 18th century Faraday Theater. For over 200 years, the Royal Institution has been at the centre of scientific research in England. The Faraday Theater still hosts the famous Friday Evening Lectures, begun by Faraday in 1826.

The steeply raked theatre's impressive architecture seats 430 on two tiers, with a dedicated projection room and 6m screen. Sensitive to the English Heritage listing of the building, Surrey-based Harpers AV installed three pairs of QSC's AcousticDesign AD-S82 loudspeakers in strategic locations within the theater and gallery areas.

Harpers AV project manager Steve Baker also specified a pair of QSC ISA 280 amplifiers and a 24-channel Phonic mixer, with the networked system under Crestron control. "QSC produc

South Africa - The historic AIDS benefit show '46664 - The Concert', staged at Cape Town's Greenpoint Stadium in association with MTV's Staying Alive on Saturday 29 November, was recorded for broadcast and DVD by south London-based Richmond Studios.A team headed by Richmond Studios founder Toby Alington flew a complete de-rig audio recording and post-production system to South Africa for the event, held in front of a sold-out audience of 40,000 and watched by millions on TV and webcast on World AIDS Day on 1 December.

Named after the prison number of Nelson Mandela, the host of the star-studded event, the show featured memorable performances from stars including Anastacia, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Ms Dynamite, Queen and Youssou N'Dour. Toby Alington, audio producer for the TV recording, said the five-hour main show, which was broadcast live to 27 countries, was edited into a 75-minu

UK - Lighting designer Brian Livingstone chose Entec to supply the full lighting production and crew for the current Belle & Sebastian 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' tour. His lighting rig is compact and versatile, consisting of 10 VL2000 spots, eight VL2000 washes, four bars of six Pars, 12 ETC Source Fours and 12 James Thomas Pixelline 1044 battens - which were the main special effects lights. Livingstone also took the Pixel battens on the USA leg of the tour, which ran through October and November.

The conventionals are all placed on a front truss, while the rear truss is used for the effects-style lighting, housing four washes and four spots. The rest of the moving lights are rigged onto four vertical onstage truss sections with T-bars. With up to 12 artists on stage, it's sometimes a tight squeeze in the smaller-staged venues.

The busy stage also has certain creative advanta

China - From 20-22 September 2003, Architectural Audio PTE Ltd (AAPL), the exclusive distributor of MediaMatrix in China and South East Asia, sponsored their 20th, and largest ever, MediaMatrix educational seminar, at the Sun Moon Resort Villa near Shanghai, China.

According to Dr David Law, Director of AAPL: "Over 350 audio professionals from all over China attended the seminar, including Chinese MediaMatrix and Peavey dealers, system integrators, engineers, past and potential customers, as well as professional and academic acoustics and networking experts. Additionally, several professors who are in charge of writing government building acoustical specifications also attended."

Education has been the foundation of MediaMatrix's ongoing success. Since its inaugural session in 1994, the popular MediaMatrix Seminar Series has become an industry event, providing inst

UK - Summit Steel was called up by production company London News Network, to take care of the production rigging for the Institute of Directors Centenary Dinner at the Royal Albert Hall.

The Dinner - traditionally a top-notch affair - this year featured a performance by the Royal Philharmonic orchestra, introduced by Richard Baker. It was sponsored by Jaguar, who wanted to display two of their top production models above the stage for the occasion. Summit - well experienced in car flying - installed two trussing grids measuring 6m x 3m flown from venue points either side of stage, and then sub-hung four Lodestar hoists to pick up the two custom-built car platforms, which Summit had custom-designed and fabricated to support the 2000kg cars.

In addition to this, Summit flew a 22sq.m Barco D-lite 7 LED screen supplied by SPS, and also installed a large curved truss to mask the o

UK - Hall Stage has acquired the specialist TV and film studio rigging, service and maintenance provider, Studio Engineering Services, with all associated staff and assets. Charles Haines, Hall Stage MD, told us: "Halls have been working in TV and film studio engineering for decades and it's a sector we are very keen to develop further. Our appointment as UK distributor for the ASM ranges of hoists mean we can now offer a far wider range of products into the sector and this acquisition is aimed squarely at it. Our two companies have been working closely together for the past few years on a number of service-related projects and we all get on very well together, which is always a good sign!"

Simon Caldwell from SES adds: "The growing company will be moving to larger purpose-built premises in Luton, Bedfordshire in the new year and will offer a full range of servi

UK - Legendary rock'n'roll trucking company Stage Truck is making good use of the entertainment industry's fastest-growing resource - StageAccess.com. "Although I still drive trucks," explains Stage Truck's Will Johns, "I'm spending more and more time talking to potential clients and finding out information about venues. Traditionally, this means a big pile of industry directories, the trusty Filofax and a long memory, all of which is a time-consuming process, and of course all those pieces of paper are constantly going out of date. By going into StageAccess.com I can email tour managers to see what's coming up, or get straight into venues' details, all in a few mouse clicks - fantastic - knowing that all the information is completely up-to-date because everyone can update their own information on the site as often as they like."

All of which is a welcome tim

UK / USA - Bandit Lites has been nominated for Lighting Company of the Year on both sides of the Atlantic: in the US, the nominations come from both Pollstar and the Parnelli Award from Pro Lights and Staging News, while in the UK, the company has been nominated by Total Production magazine.

This marks the third year in a row for the TP nomination, Bandit having won the award for the past two years. The Pollstar nomination is the company's seventh. The winners of the awards will be announced early in 2004. "It is always an honour to be recognized with nominations like this," said Richard Willis, Bandit Lites' vice-president. "This is a reflection on the quality and dedication of all the employees of Bandit Lites worldwide."

In related news, Bandit Lites is also pleased to sponsor the Lighting Designer of the Year Award to be given out at the Parnelli Awards

USA - Loud Technologies Inc (formerly Mackie Designs Inc) has announced the divestiture, as of 10 December, 2003, of Mackie Designs (Italy) S.p.A. (formerly RCF S.p.A.) for a nominal amount. The move involved the sale of all shares of Mackie Italy by Mackie Designs (Netherlands) B.V. It has included the sale of the former RCF factory and administrative office in Reggio Emilia, the RCF brand name, and all Italian-based assets, and also results in the immediate removal of over $23 million (USD) in related bank debt from Loud's consolidated financial statements.

CEO Jamie Engen told us: "This is the next step in the modernization and streamlining of our worldwide manufacturing and product development resources. In the last year, we've established a network of worldwide manufacturing resources and have added significantly to our product development and engineering teams for bot

France - The SIEL exhibition, France's leading entertainment technology trade show, will once again combine the worlds of live entertainment, events, nightlife and music when it returns to Paris from 1-4 February 2004.

In order to reflect the fast pace of technological development and innovation in the entertainment and events markets, the Trophée Louis Jouvet will be awarded at the show, honouring the most original innovation of the year, in a ceremony at the Espace Label des Prestataires on Tuesday 3 February at 6.00p.m.

Specialized audio technologies will be presented in the Espace Audio. This year, SIEL is highlighting line array systems, and a number of brands will be taking advantage of the exhibition to show their systems. For the live entertainment and events sectors, SIEL is offering four high-level conferences in partnership with the SYNPASE (Syndicat des Prestatair

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