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USA - Madonna may have headlined Super Bowl XLVI's Halftime Show, but Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures made a name for themselves too, helping to light up the stage for the Material Girl at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Lighting designer Al Gurdon, of UK-based Incandescent Design, utilised 204 Sharpys supplied by PRG after being impressed with their performance on FOX's X Factor.

Gurdon has been recognised internationally for his TV and event lighting design. He holds the Lighting Designer of the Year title from the TPI Awards and has netted Lighting Design Awards, Royal Television Society Awards, and Australia's Helpmann Award and Knight of Illumination Award. He has served as lighting designer for the Eurovision Song Contest.

For the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc. was once again the production designer, All Access Staging built the s

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UK - London's newest members club, Dorsia in South Kensington, has installed a JBL sound system as its primary sound reinforcement system.

Managing director Nick Andreen brought in Colin Pattenden of CP Sound, who specified JBL's Contractor Control series as offering the most cost-effective solution, as part of the £2.4m refurbishment of the former Firehouse club/restaurant.

The 300 capacity venue comprises a members' club, bar and restaurant set within decadently stylish surroundings over three floors The operation is fronted by Andreen and colleague Fraser Carruthers, both of whom have eminent backgrounds in London's premium hotel and nightclub scene, most recently at Boujis.

Pattenden, who has worked for the two men previously, equipped the venue with JBL, distributed through eight zones, specifying industry-standard DJ tools and a router to access the various areas

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UK - On Thursday 9 February, second year students from the Production Lighting and Lighting Design strands of the BA Theatre Practice at Central School of Speech and Drama hosted the New Technology Showcase for White Light in the Embassy Theatre.

The event gave White Light the opportunity to invite their guests and members of the ALD into a "sales force free" theatre environment to check out the latest lighting kit. The ALD annual Pub Quiz then followed, providing a chance for a bit of lighting-orientated fun and a few drinks with friends.

For the lighting students at Central, the day of the event was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. They took key roles in planning and running the whole event, and worked with Production Lighting professional Nathaniel Seekins and lighting programmers from MA Lighting. They also learnt the importance of prepping, on-site with White L

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Denmark - UK-based automation and motion control specialist, Kinesys, has appointed Light Partner as its exclusive Danish distributor in the latest expansion of its global distribution network.

The Herning based company is celebrating its 20th year of being at the forefront of the entertainment technology industry.

Says Kinesys' business development manager Mark de Gruyter, "As always, we select our distributors very carefully. Ideally they should already have a good working relationship with a reputable hoist manufacturer, which Light Partner has with Columbus McKinnon. Apart from being a group of genuinely nice and dedicated individuals the company is very well established and respected and the perfect choice for our partner in Denmark."

Light Partner also represents James Thomas and Litec trussing ranges as well as other premium brands like Vari*Lite.

Light Pa

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UK - Manchester based dbn Lighting has supplied a custom LED and control solution to the city's Whitworth Art Gallery which will run for three months as part of the Cotton : Global Threads exhibition - a compelling story about the production, consumption and global trade in cotton.

The light work is designed by artist Liz Rideal and involves the illumination of nine large windows on the top storey at the front of the building, with video material from a film - Light Curtain - which is played back via a media server also supplied by dbn.

Challenges included having to fit all the necessary LED lighting equipment to light the windows into a 30 cm deep space, keeping each window's physical lighting installation completely self-contained within its recessed space.

dbn's Nick Buckley is project managing. dbn has worked for the Gallery several times in the past, and t

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UK - PLASA's Technical Resource Office announces that an RDM and sACN Developers Conference and Plugfest will take place on the 26 - 28 April, in the UK, at Gatwick Manor, London Road at Lowfield Heath, just south of Gatwick Airport.

This Developers Conference aims to provide a European forum for manufacturers, designers, consultants and prospective users; and to ensure that the adoption of these new standards achieves desired levels of interoperability and reliability.

The "Plugfest" is a hands-on opportunity for product developers to try their products and code implementations with products from a variety of other manufacturers, with support from their industry peers in an environment that encourages co-operation and improved understanding of the standards, and with the aim of achieving high levels of interoperability.

Typically, engineers participate in these ev

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Australia - The main showroom, known as the Whitlam Room, at Sydney's Revesby Workers Club has had a spruce up including an upgrade of its technical equipment with Saltec supplying and installing a new Electro-Voice PA system.

Phill Webb, AV technician at Revesby Workers, reveals that there were four speaker brands being considered for the upgrade but the Electro-Voice system promised to deliver the best 'bang for buck' and he hasn't been disappointed.

"I've used the EV XLC system at The Cube in Campelltown, which hosts similar acts, many times and I think it's a great system," said Webb. "I really like that our system has FIR filter drive and offers the ability to network the amplifiers so that they can be monitored front of house. Plus of course it sounds great! It certainly has more than enough grunt for the room."

Due to the age of the room it was dif

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Australia - The Merewether Surfhouse has a second floor function centre featuring an open plan area which can be divided into separate rooms. The divisible room can be used for functions such as weddings, seminars, product launches and community related activities. The floor plan benefits from a wrap-around veranda and large rear terrace.

Impact AV Australia provided an audio visual design and installation for the venue that took into account the low ceilings and the high level of ambient light from the glass exterior walls. Also the AV design had to create a flexible audio visual environment for various room layouts in the multi-room facility.

The lighting system was designed to provide maximum flexibility in a corporate function centre. ETC Source Four jr Zooms profile lamps were installed as their wider lens angles were perfect for the Surfhouse's shorter throws distances.<

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UK - Marsh Lodge Production Services (MLPS) have been handling the production of conferences and meetings since the early '90's providing a variety of technical, staging and lighting solutions to, mainly, corporate clients. One area in which MLPS have built a solid reputation - and in which their AV production business has seen substantial growth - is the medical training market, working for medical societies who want an educational archive and medical companies who provide online training for NHS managers and medical staff at all levels as part of professional development programmes.

The company has recently purchased a VR-5 AV Mixer & Recorder from Roland that they are using for mixing and post production of events and corporate training videos. Whereas previously, the main requirement from a client was the ability to produce a finished product with only audio running alongsid

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Belgium - Robe's latest Robin moving lights have been installed into the two main performance spaces at the prestigious De Bijloke Muziekcentrum (Music Centre) in Ghent.

De Bijloke offers a diverse programme of high quality music, presented both in pure concert form and in new and unique combinations and conceptual formats. This covers a wide range of genres including classical and ancient music, jazz, and also incorporates other art forms. The venue produces over 100 concerts, recitals and performances a year and stages or receives another 80 plus shows and collaborative works. It attracts over 100,000 visitors and classical music lovers and aficionados annually.

The venue includes two renovated former civil hospitals, one dating back to the 13th century (the Concert Hall) and one to the 16th century (the Kraakhuis) - both converted into atmospheric performance spaces. Anothe

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UAE - A Midas PRO6 supplied by London's Britannia Row and a PRO9 from Dubai-based Sound On Stage Events had leading roles in the UAE's spectacular National Day celebrations to mark the 40th Anniversary of the nation's founding.

The PRO6 controlled all the audio, both live and broadcast, at the multi-artist arena show in the filled-to-capacity 50,000-seat Sheikh Zayed Stadium, held in the presence of UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Emirates rulers and Crown Prince.

"We had an unlimited budget and we could have taken any console in the world, but the PRO6 was the only choice for the job," says Britannia Row engineer Josh Lloyd. "This show was an incredibly high profile, complex, one-off event, and broadcast live on TV. Equipment failure was not an option."

The PRO6's digital flexibility and networking capability also prove

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UK - In celebration of PAI's 30 years within the service industry, the company will be marking the occasion throughout 2012 with a series of online anniversary activities.

Established in the summer of 1982 as a provider of cutting-edge lighting and sound systems to the entertainment sector, the South Wales-based organisation has grown extensively over the last three decades and now encompasses Vaughan Sound, Lighting Technology Projects and Link AV within the PAI Group.

"Following the expansion into the group of four businesses specialising in the design, installation and service of sound, lighting and audio-visual equipment, we are proud to have administered, supported and nurtured one of the industry's most proficient teams," says the company.

"We'll be marking the 30 year milestone on our brand new website and our social media accounts, where we will be tak

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UAE - Reflecting the increasing focus on the Middle East market, Turbosound held its second annual Middle East Sales Conference in Dubai over two days from 30 November to 1 December 2011, with over 30 delegates from across the Middle East attending this now popular event.

Managing director Simon Blackwood, sales director Dom Harter and market manager Hasna Nahdi presented the company's product strategy and new product offerings to Turbosound's regional distributors and installers from Dubai, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Sultanate of Oman, Iran, and Iraq at the Novotel World Trade Centre.

A product demonstration at the Diablo nightclub, a new build ultra-club featuring the largest single installation of Turbosound products in the Middle East market, followed, with audio designed in collaboration with key Turbosound factory sound designers and installed and comm

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USA - Sixteen years after founding rental powerhouse XL Video, Marcel de Keyzer has sold his shares to move on and up. US-based IC Technologies LLC will focus on creating unique LED video applications for the AV, architectural, entertainment, retail, hospitality, and sports industries.

Partnering with Norah de Bekker, John Frattalone, Meghan Campbell, and a fast resource of experienced LED Engineers they will be operating out of a new LED LAB in Tribeca New York.

The move, the company says, is a logical continuation of de Keyzer's move a few years ago to establish the LED LAB in New York City's SoHo, where rental clients and their end-clients could experience technologies hands on, in real-life scale and brainstorm on endless creative possibilities.

IC's focus is to create easier ways to design unique out-of-the-box video displays. "Everybody wants something uniquely vi

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Denmark - In the autumn of 2010, Denmark's Aarhus Symphony Orchestra was the proud recipient of a beautiful, new concert organ that now graces the Symphonic Hall of the Concert Hall in Aarhus. The pipe organ is a stunning piece of craftsmanship and was built by one of Europe's notable organ masters, Orgelbau Klais of Bonn, who have provided pipe organs for famous concert halls all over the world.

The Orchestra naturally wished to highlight the instrument and chose to light its façade using an LED colour changing lighting system from Martin Professional.

Over 100m of Martin LED strips mounted on the back of the wooden slats light the organ pipes (from a distance of only 15cm) while mounted vertically at the bottom of the slats and lighting the lower conical part of the pipes are Martin Tripix 1200 and Tripix 300 LED linear luminaires.

"It was important for us that the o

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UK - London-based creative agency Knifedge has produced another set of dramatic theatrical projections to act as the backdrop to a major new production of Verdi's Aida at The Royal Albert Hall.

This latest production of Verdi's operatic masterpiece is co-produced by Raymond Gubbay and The Royal Albert Hall, and directed by Stephen Medcalf. It is widely regarded as Verdi's most epic opera, telling the tragic story of a classic love triangle between slave girl Aida, the King's daughter Amneris, and Captain of the Guards, Radames.

Knifedge's latest visual effects paint evocative pictures of Ancient Egypt onto huge curved gauzes, stretching around almost a quarter of the venue. The agency has worked closely with set designer Isabella Bywater and lighting designer Andrew Bridge to blend its imagery into the overall design of the show. From a technical stand point, the rig co

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South Africa - The Theatre Lighting Archive is a new website which celebrates the pioneers of theatre lighting design in South Africa and went live on the 29 February 2012.

"I figured 29 February 29 doesn't happen every year and neither does a project like this," said the man behind the enormous task, lighting designer Denis Hutchinson. "Unlike most archives with their reams of paper and dust, the idea here is much more personal with the primary focus being video interviews with the amazing people who laid the foundations of lighting design in South Africa."

The idea came to Hutchinson after watching a panel discussion moderated by Ken Billington which was filmed in New York. "Names that I'd seen in print - Abe Feder, Peggy Clark, Tharon Musser - suddenly became people, and that was really exciting. It also got me thinking about how little we do to pre

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UK - A Midas PRO6 at FOH with an additional PRO6 and the new PRO2 on monitors, specified by live sound supervisor and supplied by Britannia Row Productions, delivered perfect performances at this year's Brit Awards, held for the second year running at London's O2 Arena .

The Brit Awards, the biggest event in the British music industry's calendar, is one of the most challenging shows to stage, with a multi-artist line-up that this year ranged from the simple guitar and vocal of Ed Sheeran to the full band, backed by choir, of Blur, all broadcast live on TV to an audience of over six million. A total of nine artists performed on the night, the line-up also including Adele, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Florence and The Machine, Noel Gallagher, Olly Murs and Rihanna. All were mixed on the PRO6.

FOH engineer, Britannia Row's Josh Lloyd, says, "The PRO6 was perfect for the job. Its ab

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Finland - Viking Line commenced service in 1959, when the S/S Viking began sailing between the Finnish mainland, the Åland Islands and Sweden. Today Viking Line has seven vessels, which sail between the Finnish mainland, Åland and Sweden as well as between Finland and the Baltic states. Operations include passenger services, recreation and cargo carrier services.

After renewing M/S Rosella's dance restaurant to the height of two floors, Jouni Sironen, the AV manager of Viking Line, was looking for the line array set, which could support live music and entertainment. After a few demo listenings, RCF TTL 31A was chosen for the new system.

The system consists of rigged TTL 12AS and four TTL 31A per side and TTS 28A subs in the centre ground stack to produce the perfect bass coverage. Four RCF C 3108W delay speakers fill the back parts of low height first floor.

RCF's Finnish

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USA Alabama based Lighting designer Taylor Price used a Jands Vista S3 console, running the next generation Vista v2 software, to control lighting for the recent US tour of Grammy Award winning rockers, Third Day.

Taylor made the switch to the Jands Vista platform while lighting another Grammy award winner, Switchfoot. Their punishing touring schedule meant Taylor was looking for a powerful yet portable control system that could easily travel on a plane. His solution was to join the growing international family of lighting designers who have bought their own Vista system. He's not looked back, and has been an enthusiastic Jands Vista user ever since.

Third Day play a wide variety of venues using a mix of their own touring rig and locally supplied production. On arena shows the Vista S3 was controlling the full touring rig of Vari*Lite 3000 profiles, Vari*Lite 3500 washes, Mart

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USA - Lighting designer, Lawrence Upton recently extended his long relationship with Smashing Pumpkins when the band took first to the American tour circuit, and then Europe, in support of their ninth album, Oceania.

However, it was the first time he had used GLP's impression platform, building 20 of the compact, lightweight Volkslicht Zoom LED heads into the set. And it certainly paid dividends.

Taking responsibility for the full stage design and dynamics, he set out in search of the latest equipment available "to suit the vibe of the tour", opting for the GLP fixtures after they had been recommended by Kevin Forster at Epic Production Technologies, who supplied the rig for the American leg, and Craig Gaff at PRG.

The tour itself was picked up across the Atlantic by Neg Earth, who maintained continuity with the GLP heads - ensuring that they performed as fl

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UK - Well over 100 sound engineers and sound rental companies from as far afield as Brazil, homed in on Wembley Arena for two days of Martin Audio MLA (Multi-cellular loudspeaker array) product demonstrations this month.

The two days were split into four separate sessions. Each session combined a theoretical presentation from R&D director Jason Baird followed by exposure to different optimisation plots, created in the new Display 2.1 software, out in the Arena itself. This enabled visitors to sample the consistency of sound coverage from points on the floor, behind the PA, at the bleachers and at the top of the raked seating in the 12,500 capacity venue.

Jennifer Warnes' Somewhere, Somebody was used as a reference track but it was left to acts such as Rammstein to demonstrate the full dynamics and muscularity of the system.

At one point Baird demonstrated the close co

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USA - Busy booths, packed seminars and a raft of new product launches firmly established PLASA Focus as an unmissable industry event for Texas. A total of 820 attendees, including exhibitors, headed to the Renaissance Austin to see over 50 brands launch dozens of new products and enjoy Focus's trademark informal, friendly atmosphere.

Among the new products making their debuts at Focus Austin were: the MAC III AirFX luminaire and M2GO and M2PC consoles, launched by Martin Professional; along with the DLV Digital Light, and TechnoArc automated luminaire, both from High End Systems.

The Professional Development Program was a major attraction with substantial audiences for sessions that ranged from Demystifying Audio to Austin City Limits Live!.

CEO of PLASA Matthew Griffiths, commented, "Exhibitors have been enthusing about the high quality of visitors and th

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UK - In May 2011, four apprentices joined entertainment lighting specialist White Light. All four joined on a two year term as part of White Light's involvement with the National Skills Academy for Creative and Cultural.

Natalie Brotherton, Gabrielle Felix-Daramy, Daniel Goodwin and Danielle Morris all took the opportunity to gain practical, hands-on experience in the world of entertainment lighting by working within White Light. Starting with preparing cables then moving on through White Light's rigging and bench teams the apprentices have been learning the 'nuts and bolts' of entertainment lighting. The plan, in time, is for all four to work in every area of the company's warehouse, helping to prepare equipment for the more than 3,000 projects White Light is involved with each year while learning from the company's highly experienced staff.

Their work is by no means limited

  1. Four PLASA Rigging Standards in Public Review
  2. Stardraw Design 7 generates record results
  3. RML supports Mad Mad World
  4. ArKaos releases latest version of GrandVJ
  5. NMK Electronics to distribute Rycote
  6. Liquid Productions mixes with Roland
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