South Africa - One of Vuyani Dance Company's 2014 dance experiences took the form of an "out-of-this-world" dance piece called Full Moon at the Mandela stage at the Joburg Theatre, Johannesburg. Inspired by the mysteries of the universe, this dreamlike piece claims to take audiences "on an epic journey into the celestial realm and back to earth, riding the mysterious carpet of the time-space continuum in a magical flight of the imagination."

The visual possibilities for a show like this show proved irresistible for UK-based lighting and set designer, Declan Randall, who returned to South Africa specifically to work on the project. He used the diverse services of local theatre equipment rental supplier Gearhouse Splitbeam to help bring the concept to life.

"I have had a long and wonderfully collaborative relationship with VDC since the company be

UK - Arcstream AV, specialist provider of interactive tech and special effects for events and permanent installations, supplied a range of cutting-edge technologies for the Pepsi Experiential Cube, part of the #LIVEFORNOW campaign, which was open to visitors from 5-9 March at Observation point on London's South Bank. Commissioned by DesignScene, Arcstream supplied a videowall, an interactive floor, and a fog screen.

The videowall was a 65" display behind frosted glass. The display showed a life-sized man trapped behind an ice wall. He appeared to bang against the ice when people approached, fading away back into the ice when they moved away. An infrared beam break sensor triggered a media server to run the content when people approached. A second IR beam break sensor reset the effect when visitors departed. Arcstream provided the hardware and software content.

The interac

India - Multiple stages, over 60 artists, one massive campground and a range of activities, sports, food and drink: India's recent Enchanted Valley Carnival was a blend of music and adventure that brought together international performers and homegrown talent in one spectacular event. The picturesque venue in Pune's Aamby Valley City became the headquarters for top-of-the-line sound, jaw-dropping lights and visuals and a host of activities, complete with an eclectic line-up of artists and crystal-clear sound by D.A.S. Audio professional systems.

Event organisers Twisted Entertainment called in Mumbai-based company Sound & Light Professionals to design and install the sound solution for the EVC. The team was faced with the challenge of ensuring powerful yet clear sound for the fans at the Main and Trance stages, which faced each other at right angles. After studying the venue's p

Benelux - With a 50 year history in the industry, Phlippo have become one of the biggest competitors in the Benelux area for equipment hire and full production support. Phlippo provides both dry rental of all their equipment as well as full production support to everything from musical productions, TV shows and dance events to touring productions, festivals and corporate events.

Phlippo consists of two companies. A rental branch, Phlippo Rental, which deals with rental activities and Phlippo Productions, which works on all the production support. Offering a wide variety of equipment including moving lights and control desks (Clay Paky, Vari*Lite, Martin, Robe, Highend Systems), video (2000sqm of LED screens) and sound (Digico , L'acoustics, Martin Audio), Phlippo have, after careful consideration, decided to add Hippotizer to their product range.

Having recently purchase two H

India - Since Ansata CS Pvt Ltd were appointed sole distributorship for the whole Indian subcontinent at ProLight + Sound in Frankfurt in March, the company has engaged with the d&b audiotechnik product range with considerable vigour.

"We had already fully briefed all our staff and trained three engineers in Application and Service support at the d&b facility at Backnang by the time the appointment was made," said company founder Leslie J Lean. No small undertaking with seven offices across India. "But we wanted to reach out to our clients and end users as quickly as possible." A brief discussion with application support at d&b head office in Backnang, Germany, lead immediately to a plan; APAC education manager Gert Sanner being dispatched to India barely a month later.

"In the space of a week I have visited three of Ansata's offices, in Delhi, Bangalo

USA - Elation products were again put to work across several stages at the 2014 Coachella music and arts festival but this year also fulfilled a new role as powerful site lighting

Elation gear has become a staple of the Coachella Festival as it has grown to become one of the largest and most successful music festivals in the U.S. This year, Coachella hosted more than 500,000 people over the festival's two weekends with headliners Muse and Arcade Fire, along with a list of surprise guests and more than 180 other acts, delivering another memorable event.

Elation dealers Visions Lighting, AG Lighting and Felix Lighting supplied an abundance of Elation lighting for this year's festival. Used all around the festival site including the Outdoor Theatre Stage (Platinum Beam 5Rs - Visions Lighting), the Sahara Tent (Platinum Spot 35s, Opti Tri 30s and Design LED 60 Tri-strips - AG Ligh

UK - Sony has announced today it has partnered with Joss Stone and Big Earth Productions to provide production equipment for the singer's record-breaking Total World Tour. While Joss will be performing in every single country on earth, in the most comprehensive world tour ever attempted by a musician, a two man production team will use Sony equipment - including wireless microphones, handheld camcorders, and Sony ActionCams - to capture her journey.

Having started on 28th March 2014, Joss Stone has already begun her mission to play at least one gig in every country on the planet, and will be collaborating with local musicians to play a combination of indigenous music and her own songs. During the tour Joss will also be joined by high-profile artists and friends. As part of Sony's vision to provide products that help to capture the emotional intent of the artists, the company has

India - Come 3rd of July 2014 and the gates will be thrown open to welcome the trade and professionals to the Indian Industry's Premier Exhibition on Music Production, Entertainment & Events Technology - Indian DJ Expo 2014 - in New Delhi at the Pragati Maidan.

"The Indian DJ Expo was conceptualised after carefully analysing the steady growth in the entertainment and events sector with night life, dining, DJ gigs and music festivals becoming increasingly popular and in-demand in India, which has resulted in huge investments into DJ gear, sound, light and visuals," say organisers.

The rise of the DJ in India's entertainment and events industry has also resurrected the dying 'music production' sector, which was previous limited to producing Bollywood soundtracks and pop albums etc. But there has been a sudden rise in studios set up by artists and DJs alike who are now

China - At the 2014 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, 20 car manufacturers relied on nearly 300 self-powered Meyer Sound loudspeakers to provide visually unobtrusive and high-quality reinforcement. These brands included Chrysler, Toyota, Volkswagen, Subaru, and Honda; luxury makers Bentley, Ferrari, and Maserati; and six domestic Chinese manufacturers.

"Our business is focused on commercial exhibition, and it's a great advantage for us to offer self-powered Meyer Sound systems," says Dakun Bai, audio technology department director for Beijing Huelead AV Equipment, which provided more than 124 Meyer Sound loudspeakers for voice and music applications. "The line level audio cables don't suffer the attenuation losses of speaker cables, and they are easier to tie on a truss. Self-powering also eliminates the noise and heat dissipation of amplifier racks, an

USA - Featuring British artists such as The Wytches, Slaves, and Dinosaur Pile-Up, and an audio system comprised of UK-made audio gear including Tannoy loudspeakers and Lab.gruppen amplifiers, the 2014 British Music Embassy venue had a major impact at SXSW 2014.

Now in its seventh year, the 2014 showcase at the iconic Austin, Texas festival boasted a powerful but compact audio rig comprised of Tannoy point source loudspeakers, Lab.gruppen amplifiers, Allen & Heath GLD digital consoles and LAKE DSP.

In the past, line array systems have often been deployed at the British Music Embassy, but at the request of the promoters, Cato Music Ltd. of London, Tannoy was asked to provide a system made up of Tannoy VQ 60s and VS 218DR subs powered by Lab.gruppen amplifiers with Lake control.

Pairing Tannoy point source loudspeakers with Lab.gruppen amplifiers provided high quality sound, e

Spain - A Lynx Pro Audio LX -V8 line array system was used for the final of basketball's Eurocup. The final was between teams Unics Kazan (from Russia) and Valencia Basket (from Spain) with the final played over two legs and Valencia Basket winning both legs to become European Champions.

Fuente San Luis in Valencia, where the first leg was played has a capacity of 9,000 and was full to the brim . The audio was flown under the centre marker, with six LX-V8 arrays around an aluminium frame . All Lynx LX -V8 boxes installed had the possibility to be controlled by Ethernet , meaning the OCS control software could control the settings for each zone to perfection, providing power and intelligibility for the event.

In total 20 LX -V8 units were used in the pavilion for the sound reinforcement. Guillermo Tébar, sound engineer for Sonovideo, the company which carried out the ins

USA - Miami's Club E11even is a 24-hour hybrid club, operating as an intimate lounge space by day and a gentleman's club by night with an expanded space, Cirque Du Soleil acts, aerialists, contortionists and interactive theatrical characters. Recently, Miami-based iDesign installed Martin Professional lighting fixtures to be the centre of all parts.

With a total of 38 Rush Profiles (32 - main room, six - day room), 16 Rush Beams in the main room and three Hazers (two - main room, one - day room), Club E11even chose Martin for its power and, most importantly, its reliability.

"The design grew from a bunch of ideas," stated Michael Meacham, iDesign Productions. "We saw the new Rush line at the Prolight + Sound Show in Frankfurt and we were very intrigued. We knew we needed a fixture with the power and LED engine that could go nonstop and the Rush line was a great

Russia - Sound and light contractor, Next-proaudio's Russian distributor, recently installed a Next-proaudio's line-array system in a big church - 'Word of Life', located in Moscow. The main aims of the installation were to achieve high sound pressure levels and high sound fidelity throughout the venue.

Word of Life is a protestant church. They provide daily sermons and practically every month organize musical events. It is a church, with a large number of members and in a central location, with both an ability to break through with the Gospel in its own culture.

Light and Sound Contractor chose the new line array system of Next-proaudio - LA212x to fulfil all the requirements of this building, because the system in this room required not only to cover a large area with powerful sound, but also good speech intelligibility. Light and Sound Contractor installed 16 LA212x line ar

USA - Set in the pastoral 'Spirit of Suwannee Music Park' and featuring 15 different yoga and meditation sessions on topics ranging from breath work and mantras to the flow arts of hoop and poi, the Aura Music & Arts Festival is one of the most mellow events on the music fest calendar.

Organisers of the annual gathering, which began in 2010, wanted to convey this uplifting mood on stage. The Design Oasis team helped them do just that, in part by using the MVP 12 LED video panel and COLORado 1-Tri IP LED wash from Chauvet Professional to frame their performance stage with a lush variety of colours and ethereal images.

"We created a 12' by 6' overhanging LED video display at the front of the stage that angled down at a 45 degree angle, plus we used some added MVP 12s on the side," said Luccas Oliveira, co-owner of Design Oasis, one of south Florida's biggest 24/7 renta

UK - Showforce has opened a dedicated office in Glasgow ahead of the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup this Summer. Amongst the services that the Glasgow operation will provide are event, site and seating crew, overlay support, qualified plant operators and specialist labour.

The office will deal with enquiries and bookings along with recruitment, training and accreditation to ensure that their usual high standards of service are maintained.

Showforce's operations director Chris Martelly explains, "We have already secured a contract with a leading power provider and have a number of other projects in the pipeline. Having a base in the city where the Commonwealth Games will be hosted that also has excellent transport links to St. Andrews makes sense. We have started to receive enquiries for crew in Scotland and having the people and the right operations team in place to ser

USA - Pro audio brand Aphex is currently in its 40th year of business and plans to celebrate its 40th anniversary in grand style next year. On the way to this milestone, Aphex continues to grow and expand its focus on developing new DSP technologies with the goal of putting these into Aphex Pro and Prosumer products, as well as into a variety of products made by OEM licensees.

Aphex is in the midst of expanding into critical markets beyond Pro Audio to augment its business and offerings, with technology geared to assistive listening; speech recognition; and prosumer recording, podcasting, telecommunication and automotive infotainment.

Since purchasing Aphex in 2010, parent company DWV Entertainment has made dramatic changes to expand the Aphex brand and its pro products. Starting with a major facility change (moving into a stand-alone building in Burbank) and revising its enti

USA - Music City held its annual Grammy Block Party with lighting provided by Bandit Lites. The private event for members of The Recording Academy was held at Owen Bradley Park and included performances by Chris Young, Kacey Musgraves and Martina McBride. Two-time Grammy award winner Jim Lauderdale hosted while cast members of ABC's Nashville mingled with the crowd and even performed on stage.

Lighting designer Mike Marcario utilised Martin MAC 2000 Washes for the downstage front wash, along with Martin Mac Auras and GRN Batten 3-36's for the mid and upstage bars. He also included 8-lite moles and par 64's downstage for audience light and key light, respectively and operated a GrandMA 2 console.

One challenge Marcario prepared for was the weight factor. Due to the mobile stage and the fact that the long summer days meant most of the set times would take place before the sun se

UK - XL Video is again providing full video production - including projection, LED screens, media server control and full camera / PPU package - to the critically acclaimed Arcade Fire Reflektor world tour, for which set and visuals have been carefully sculpted by show designer Richard Stembridge.

The band are well known for their penchant for the experimental, the off-beat and for embracing creative challenges. Stembridge worked on the last tour, The Suburbs in 2011 as video designer and has now taken on the role of show designer with great enthusiasm.

XL Video's project manager Phil Mercer comments, "It's fantastic that Richie has stepped up to Show Designer. The show is real proof of his imagination, vision, talent and ability to think differently. As always we are really enjoying working with him, and it's great to see show video encouraging a real engag

USA - Cadac is once again participating in the Broadway Sound Master Classes but for the first time in the guise of its new US & Canada division, headed up by general manager Paul Morini. Cadacs presence is in association with its US theatre sound consultant Tom Benson of RF Productions.

Commenting on Cadac's ongoing commitment to the event, Morini states, "Cadac has been synonymous with epic theatre productions since the introduction of amplification to the genre. Major innovations like the J-Type console and SAM automation led the industry for a decade. Now the Cadac CDC eight console offers all the advantages of digital with a truly intuitive user interface, superlative Cadac audio quality and SAM-4-CDC automation."

The company will be showing its flagship CDC eight-32 digital sound production console, which recently made its public theatre debut on Mike Walker's

India - New Indian jamming studio, A Square, has installed an Allen & Heath GLD digital mixing system. Situated in the capital of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, the studio is the first digital audio studio to be opened by company, Jam Pad, designed to provide teaching facilities for aspiring musicians and also acts as a hub for bands and musicians to meet and network.

The studio is based around a GLD-80 mixer along with the GLD-AR2412 audio rack, set up to enable live jamming and studio recording on DAW, using the mixer's M-Dante card.

Mr. Saumyasheel, audio studio manager, says, "I cannot imagine my studio without the GLD-80 mixer because it is the heart of A Square. Due to the huge number of inputs in this mixer, I can include a number of instruments and vocalists. I use the copy and paste function to arrive at a basic channel setting and experiment with the GLD's 'ganging' fu

UK - AEG, Kilimanjaro, Live Nation, Loudsound, Metropolis and SJM will put Star Events' Active Roof Technology (ART) to the test at festival sites this summer, ahead of the HSE's proposed changes to the Construction (Design & Management) Regulations.

Based on Kinesys Libra components, ART monitors every production point rigged to a stage roof, ensuring the show stays safely in step with the structure's load capacity.

Roger Barrett, technical & commercial director at Star Events, comments, "By building the system into the roof supports rather than interfering with festival rigging, it enables the roof to double as a weighing machine, in real time.

"To ensure safety, we need to know not only what the weights are, but how they transfer into the structure and ART gives us that critical data."

The new CDM Regs are expected to clarify the responsibility on the pro

UK - Students at London's Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance have used an Avolites Sapphire Touch and Tiger Touch II to stage a concert as part of a specialist module on lighting design for live music.

The students opted to take 'The Concert Lighting Project', offered in addition to their theatre lighting design courses at the college by Rose Bruford programme director and lighting designer Hansjorg Schmidt.

Avolites' head of training Amy Schofield visited Rose Bruford to demo the Sapphire Touch and Tiger Touch II consoles, with specific lighting design for live music tuition from LD Dave "Bickie" Lee, who has worked with high profile pop acts including One Direction and Westlife.

The students were tasked with creating a lighting design for a concert at Rose Bruford's 150-capacity theatre, working together on lighting design and programming, and taking

UK - POLARaudio has responded to the fresh demands placed upon the company by the recent acquisition of new exclusive brands. In particular, Loud Technologies' brands Mackie and Ampeg have significantly increased volumes in the MI side of the business. In anticipation of this increased traffic, POLARaudio moved swiftly towards an internal restructuring that could "more efficiently accommodate the fast-growing nature of the company".

The creation of two distinct divisions within the business, one for MI customers and one for Installation customers along the lines of an approximate 50/50 split, allows the company to more specifically focus the talents of its staff in their areas of expertise. Whilst the two divisions run in parallel under the same roof, the structures of the system do not preclude some overlapping of skills. Teamwork remains the foundation of every proce

Belgium - LumenRadio and Controllux have confirmed a partnership where Controllux will now distribute LumenRadio's wireless lighting controls products in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Commenting on the partnership, LumenRadio's sales & marketing manager Jessica Björk says, "We are delighted to partner with Controllux, a company that shares our strong commitment to providing the best technology, the best support and stands by their customers all the way. Controllux are also a highly respected company within their territories. Their extensive experience both in live productions and installations will be invaluable to growing our business in Belgium."

For more than 45 years, Controllux has played a very active role within the lighting industry. Based in Meerhout, Belgium, Controllux has an impressive distribution portfolio of leading premium brands such as Robe Lighting, ADB

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