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Europe - VNV Nation, the Irish alternative electronic project led by singer, songwriter and producer, Ronan Harris, is currently on tour throughout Europe, promoting its new album, Electric Sun.
With music and lyrics ranging from melodic industrial dance anthems to haunting ballads and post-classical soundtrack pieces, VNV Nation is renowned for delivering live shows full of sound and light, energy and emotion.
Lighting and show designer, Martin Heining, of MHShowdesign, has worked with VNV Nation for eight years and understands well the style that excites him. “Ronan Harris is addicted to light,” he says. “He has strong visual ideas and loves beams, which I like to feature strongly in my designs.
“The moment Marc Lorenz (Ayrton’s designer relationship manager for Europe) showed me Cobra at his office and I saw its laser-sharp beam, it took me

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Europe - The Australian Pink Floyd Show (TAPFS) continues touring year-round and has just finished a lengthy European arena tour.
Lighting designer Tom Mumby has worked with them since 2012, initially coming onboard as the projector tech, and then moving on to LD’ing and operating lighting in 2016. The Grimsby-based lighting rental company, Stage and Light, of which he is a director, is also the lighting vendor for all the UK and European touring work, and this latest design utilised 38 x Robe LED Beam 150s and 22 x Spiider wash beams.
The current aesthetic is based on a collage of many classic Floyd lightshow elements. The look is dominated by a 5m circular truss centre stage, which, together with strategically placed drapes masks off an LED wall behind. Video still plays a central role in all the song narratives.s
The 24 x LEDBeam 150s are spread evenly aroun
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UK - Gary Beestone Associates made Unusual Rigging their contractor of choice to supply the rigging and automation for Eurovision 2023 in Liverpool. The event, held at Liverpool’s M&S arena, was hosted on behalf of last year’s winner’s Ukraine and featured one of the entertainment world’s most complex stages.
As well as the rigging requirements of the show itself, Unusual was also contracted to supply the aerial rescue cover. With the set design finalised and ready from the get-go, the team had approximately 10 weeks of pre-production time for this huge-scale event. “Knowing exactly what we were working towards from day one was a huge benefit given the sheer quantity of work involved,” says Paul Rhodes, senior production rigger at Unusual.
He continues: “This year’s Eurovision set had a lot of automation. The set design required nearly 600 motors,

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UK - With record attendance, PLASA Focus Leeds 2023 proved itself yet again as the go-to trade event for the entertainment technology industry in the north of the UK as it returned to Royal Armouries from 9-10 May.
This year’s show saw a strong 20% increase in attendance from 2022 and a 5% increase from 2019, confirming the rising importance of in-person connections. Furthermore, this year saw 18% more students attending – a promising sign for the long-term prospects of the live sector.
Always popular for its inclusive layout and friendly atmosphere, PLASA Focus Leeds welcomed a diverse array of visitors, with organisers reporting that one in five were business directors or owners. The most common professions represented by visitors were engineers, technicians and programmers. Moreover, a third of visitors were final decision makers.
Tony Torlini, general m

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USA - Artistic inspiration often finds its most fertile ground outside the gates of convention. Such was the case with the lighting and production design that Max Lenox and Andrew Goedde created for Mt. Joy on the band’s current world tour.
While conventional wisdom advises not to mix too many colours on stage at the same time, Lenox and Goedde have been enthralling crowds, and supporting the psychedelic indie group’s music, with a full spectrum design that sometimes displays a rainbow of colours side by side.
“For this new show, we really wanted to use bold, vibrant colours to capture the band’s energy and creativity,” said Lenox, of Wide Open Productions. “We used multiple colours to create a sense of chaos and movement that enhances the psychedelic feel. While some designers may be hesitant to use a lot of colour, I think taking risks and experimenting w

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USA - British rock band Muse recently finished the North American leg of its Will of the People tour, named for the band’s ninth studio album. Lighting designer Sooner Routhier of Sooner Rae Creative, who served as co-production designer with tour creative director Jesse Lee Stout, chose Ayrton Perseo and Domino LT fixtures as stage lights and spots. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
“I love the reliability of the fixtures and that they are rated IP65,” says Routhier. “With Muse heading to Europe for a summer stadium tour at the end of May, it was important to have fixtures that could deal with inclement weather. We also love the fixtures’ brightness and smooth field of colours.” John Bahnick and Josh Wagner from Upstaging provided the Ayrton fixtures.
The post-apocalyptic staging of the new tour takes the b

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Poland - The shift towards sustainability in the theatre industry is becoming increasingly decisive and tangible. The National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra sets an example by replacing traditional halogen/tungsten fixtures with new Prolights' technologies: EclPar TU and EclProfile FWTU.
The National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice is one of the leading Polish symphony orchestras, as well as a versatile cultural institution. The concert hall, with acoustics designed by Nagata Acoustics, has a reputation for being one of the best concert halls in the world in terms of acoustics. Proof of this is the fact that NOSPR is one of only two European institutions to have been admitted to the international organisation ECHO, which brings together 21 of Europe's most prestigious concert halls.
Thanks to the support of Show Design, Prolights' distributor in Poland,

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UK - Creative Technology delivered the main LED screens and projection mapping of Windsor Castle for the Coronation Concert of King Charles III.
“It is always a huge honour to work on such high-profile live events, from the 75th commemoration of VJ Day, to the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. It is incredible to see not only the public’s overwhelming response but also the entire live events industry showing such high praise and support for the people behind the scenes who make all of it possible,” says Graham Miller, head of music/entertainment at Creative Technology UK.
With over 10m viewers watching the celebration at home, with many more worldwide and a 20,000 strong audience gathered within Windsor Castle grounds including King Charles III and the Royal Family, the Creative Technology team worked hard throughout the entire planning and delivery stages of the

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USA - Bandit Lites recently illuminated the stage at the Bristol Motor Speedway live Easter celebration service. American sports icon and evangelist Tim Tebow and award-winning Christian musicians Phil Wickham and Cory Asbury took the stage on Sunday, 9 April prior to the start of the historic Food City Dirt Race.
The BMS Easter celebration preceded the start of the Food City Dirt Race NASCAR Cup Series race and aired nationally on FOX and PRN Radio. Tebow provided a faith-based message while Asbury and Wickham performed several songs.
Production designer Scott Moore and Lighting designer Mark Carver sought to integrate lighting fixtures with the upstage LED wall display that would evoke energy as well as read well on camera.
“These fixtures would also need to provide various unique looks and flexibility while fitting in the space allowed,” said Carver. “

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USA - A runway filled with fashion, a guest list filled with stars, and a lighting rig filled with Elation Proteus. That was the successful recipe for Italian luxury fashion company Versace at its recent FW23 Fashion Show in Los Angeles. 4Wall provided an all-IP65-rated lighting package of 85 Proteus Maximus and 56 Proteus Rayzor 760 luminaires to KCD Worldwide for the event.
Scott Ciungan, technical director at KCD Worldwide, the fashion experiences agency that has worked with Versace for a decade, said that the pairing of the brand with the city during Oscars weekend all made sense. “This is a big breakout collection for them and a big moment for the brand. The collection that Donatella put together has roots tied to Hollywood and California, and the set, creative and location were all tailored around those elements.”
FW23 served as a platform for Versace to sh

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USA - Step into Muldraugh Hill Baptist Church of Lebanon, Kentucky, on any given Sunday as the music and ministry are brought clearly and vividly to life thanks to a recent audio transformation from JCA Media and LEA Professional amplifiers.
This modest town, which sits directly in the centre of the Bluegrass State, is no stranger to exceptional music. Lebanon was an entertainment hotspot for three decades in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, hosting classic musicians like Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Jerry Lee Lewis at local clubs. So, it’s no wonder that great acoustics are important to the culture and history of this small town. The nearly 150-year-old Muldraugh Hill is among many Baptist and other denominational churches in the area that are transforming the dynamic of their services through audio, video, and lighting.
JCA Media is key to tho

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South Africa - Sound Stylists has purchased a DiGiCo Quantum 225 audio mixing console from local distributor DWR Distribution.
“We had many SD consoles, but I noticed that everyone was going the Quantum route,” explains Kevin Glover, owner of Sound Stylists. “We were fortunate to sell our former consoles to new owners who will get good use out of them, which allowed us to upgrade to the Quantum series.”
The timing was right. Business has been good for Sound Stylists, the company has enough work to not overextend themselves - well, on most days anyway - and Kevin has always kept ahead, making sure his equipment stays relevant. “When Kyle Robson from DWR said he had 225s coming in, I asked him to put one aside for me,” says Kevin.
While Sound Stylists have their fair share of international gigs, DiGiCo’s dominance on technical riders was not Kevin

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Italy - On 27-28 April, king of trap music, Sfera Ebbasta - stage name of Gionata Boschetti - performed his explosive show for the first time at the temple of opera, the Verona Arena, for the premiere of his summer tour that will take him all over Italy.
To illuminate the famed Roman amphitheatre, lighting designer Josh Geromin opted for 41 Ayrton Cobras, which have already been chosen for numerous tours. Cobra is designed to render a D65 white point for perfect colour reproduction, a 0.6° beam angle and an extreme focusing range that allows the shape of the beam to be adjusted according to the operating conditions distance XT Focus.
"Cobras have been used both as spots using the various prism/gobo wheels, and as tracers because of their ability to project very long distances,” says LD Geromin. “They were placed partly on moving structures and partly on the floor

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The Netherlands - Techno-based Rotterdam Rave runs up to 10 underground rave events a year which draw in excess of 50,000 visitors. Originally located in old industrial buildings, the sold-out events have grown rapidly in size, and the organisation recently adopted the 8000-capacity RTM Stage at Rotterdam Ahoy as the newest addition to the Rotterdam Rave territory. As a purpose-built venue, the RTM Stage needed to prove its worth as ‘a genuine rave cave with plenty of underground vibes’.
Helping bring about this transformation at the Rotterdam Rave Kick-Off 2023 event in February was Peitsman Licht en Geluid BV, which supplied two MDG ATMe haze generators to Stöd for show designer, Joël Lemmerling, and lighting designer, Guy van Noorden.
Peitsman’s project leader for the event, Patrick Botterman, explains: “There was some scepticism amongst the rave goers tha

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USA - Mike Marcario faced challenges when creating the lighting rig for Rend Collective’s 2023 Whosoever tour. The chart-topping Northern Irish Worship band decided that they would be taking two tour bus trailers on their coast-to-coast US tour, which meant that space for gear was at a premium.
“Space was definitely a big concern,” said Marcario. “With two bus trailers, varying stage sizes, and power limitations the fixtures we selected had to be compact, low weight, and low power draw.”
Complicating matters further, some of the venues have little in the way of house rigs, which means that Marcario and the design team have to rely heavily or solely on their touring package to create the varied and engaging looks in the 75-minute show.
Marcario’s solution was to devise a plan that had each fixture fill multiple roles. “There aren’t a lot of fixture

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Namibia - Stage Audio Works (SAW) Namibia recently moved into new offices in Faraday Street, Windhoek. Leaving behind their old headquarters in Diesel Street, the new facility will help focus and improve operations in the long term and provide a demo space for clients to experience SAW’s application-ready solutions.
The office changeover was carried out in multiple phases to ensure that SAW Namibia’s service to active clients remained unaffected. The new office offers a streamlined, professional design, whilst retaining the functionality required for SAW Namibia to serve its core markets. Furthermore, clients within the corporate, media and entertainment industries will benefit from hands-on experience with products in the new experience centre. Naturally, the technology deployed at Faraday Street was implemented by SAW Namibia’s own integration experts.
"We coul

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UK - Maidstone's MuMu nightclub recently underwent a major refurbishment after a significant fire in 2021. The nightclub had to shut down for several months to carry out repairs and refurbishment. However, with the recent installation of a Martin Audio stereo monitoring solution by Middlesex Sound and Lighting, the lounge and bar is now back and ready to deliver.
The venue, which includes a traditional Irish pub, a speakeasy, a hidden laundromat room, an eatery and restaurant, a newly refurbished cabaret bar, and a basement club area, presented a challenging opportunity for the team at Middlesex Sound and Lighting.
"The whole space is like a labyrinth,” recalls Darrel Olivier, director of Middlesex Sound and Lighting. “The main room is accessed via a small corridor which leads upstairs and along the way, there are these washing machines with quirky content displaye

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Poland - Robe was a gold sponsor of the 5th Scena Jutra (Stage of Tomorrow) conference, a high profile two day industry symposium taking place at the Teatr Wielki Polish National Opera in Warsaw, organised by the Stage of Tomorrow Foundation.
An impressive array of high-profile Polish and international speakers and influencers ensured there was plenty of interest in the diverse programme that explored multiple topics and themes all related to stage presentation, scenography, dramaturgy, theatricality, and expression over 50 separate sessions. Debates, discussions and presentations focused on how new and developing technologies - from the latest lighting fixtures and sound systems to VR, real-time visual tools remote tracking and AI - might affect the future creation of emotional experiences for audiences and guests.
Scena Jutra president Rafal Rzeczkowski was delight

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Germany - Located in the southern town of Leonberg, Bowl & Co takes bowling to a new level. Visitors can enjoy a choice of 18 lanes, with Spark technology on eight lanes enabling the projection of custom photographs, game results and stats directly onto the lane, or play enhanced games with targets displayed directly on the tracks. And when the bowling is over, then it’s time to relax in the bar and restaurant, play darts or billiards, or perhaps take in a movie at the on-site IMAX cinema.
Central to the delivery of the visitor experience is a Nexo ID Series sound system installed by local audio-visual technology specialists Fein Media. Designed in collaboration with the Nexo Engineering Support team, the system provides the power and headroom to go way beyond background music and announcements, creating a party atmosphere in the venue, particularly on the regular DJ n

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Ireland - Robert Juliat has announced the appointment of PSI Production as its new exclusive distributor for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with effect from April 2023.
PSI Production was established in 1996 to provide high-quality technical solutions to the corporate, arts and entertainment industry.
Its lighting department specialises in all aspects of lighting from theatrical, architectural, live concerts and festivals, to television, conferences and special events. PSI also has an in-house lighting design team, and a network of talented LDs at its disposal.
The company will be responsible for promoting and supporting the entire range of Robert Juliat lighting products. With offices located in Belfast and Dublin, it is well placed to service all clients on the island.
“As Ireland’s principal technical production company, PSI Production

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Armed Presence - Drones will be restricted from flying above Liverpool during Eurovision, as police in Merseyside prepare for their biggest ever operation. Merseyside Police said restrictions affecting drones would be in place from 23:00 BST until 14 May, the day after the competition final. A "visible armed presence" was also expected as about 100,000 extra visitors are set to travel to the city.
Liverpool is preparing to host the UK's first Eurovision Song Contest for more than 20 years. Two semi-finals and a final will take place at the M&S Bank Arena between 9 and 13 May. Ch Insp Iain Wyke said: "Our policing plans for the Eurovision Song Contest take land, sea and air into consideration and these airspace restrictions, just like other security measures such as road closures or patrols on the River Mersey, are aimed at keeping people safe."
Short List -

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UK - Aerial visual arts company AeroAVA marked the official flight launch of its new fleet of high-performance drones on Coronation Weekend with a 100-drone display featuring a coronation motif.
The event was held on 6 and 7 May at the company’s new test and demo home at the British Model Flying Association (BMFA) headquarters in Buckminster.
In March, AeroAVA received final certification from the Civil Aviation Authority to provide displays for outdoor events, broadcast entertainment, public celebrations and marketing campaigns in the UK.
Company co-founder Tom Rees said: “Since receiving official CAA approval we’ve been getting enquiries from a wide range of clients - from broadcasters, events owners, marketing agencies and tourist attractions, so we were delighted to officially kick off our 2023 season on such a historic weekend by crowning the event wit

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Italy - ARRI has opened a new office in Rome to further promote and support the film and audio-visual industry in Italy. To celebrate this milestone, an opening ceremony took place on 3 May, 2023. More than 100 guests from the Italian film industry, including cinematographers, producers, directors, business partners, postproduction and rental professionals gathered together to toast the new premises.
The event was also attended by members of ARRI’s global management team. “It is with great pleasure that we celebrate the opening of the new Rome office,” says Christian Richter, general manager sales & solutions EMEAI at ARRI. “The Italian film industry has an incredible heritage that needs no introduction. ARRI already has a long history in Italy. ARRI’s new presence in the Italian capital shows the will to be an integral part of this community to bring support t

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USA - AVL Media Group has announced that it has been appointed as the exclusive distributor of Wharfedale Pro products in the USA, effective immediately. AVL will bring Wharfedale Pro's audio solutions to customers across the USA.
"AVL Media Group is thrilled to be partnering with Wharfedale Pro to distribute their products in the US," says Stephen Kosters, CEO of AVL Media Group. "Wharfedale Pro's commitment to quality and innovation aligns perfectly with AVL Media Group's mission to provide our customers with the best possible audio and video solutions. We are excited to offer our customers a wider range of options to suit their audio needs, and we look forward to a long and successful partnership with Wharfedale Pro."
As part of this partnership, AVL Media Group will be responsible for the distribution of Wharfedale Pro products, including loudspeakers, subwoofers,
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