Romania - More than 100 Panasonic projectors have been used to create one of the world's largest architectural video mapping shows to commemorate the 555th anniversary of Bucharest.

The iMapp Bucharest 555 years anniversary event saw the 270m wide, 23.000m2 facade of the Bucharest Parliament Palace transformed into a giant outdoor theatre for the celebrations, which mark 555 years since the first documented mention of the Romanian capital.

The Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors created the huge display by using edge blending and geometric mapping software to create a single seamless image.

"We chose the DZ21K mostly because of its size, and being so robust we were able to make stacks with lots of projectors," said Adrian Pochiscan, technical director of 360 Revolution, the company that produced the show. "We liked its resolution, its remote control capabilities fro

UK - Max Narula, a student at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, has won this year's Michael Northen Bursary (MNB), picking up a £500 cash award at a special presentation at PLASA London.

The Bursary is awarded annually to a student or recent graduate who has demonstrated strong, imaginative and creative lighting designs. It is organised by the Association of Lighting Designers, a professional body representing lighting designers in the live performance industry.

Northen was both a former Chairman and President of the ALD and the first credited lighting designer in the UK.

Each year an award of £500 is presented to a young lighting designer who has shown excellence in the field of lighting design. The project must be a performance-based lighting design in or out of the college environment. Two runner-up prizes of £250 each are also presented: an ETC sponsor

UK - Robe Lighting enjoyed its biggest, busiest and best PLASA show to date over four days at London's ExCeL Centre and also won its fourth PLASA Innovation Award for its new Bright Multi-Functional Luminaire (BMFL) high powered signature product.

"PLASA 2014 was awesome in every way!" declared the Czech moving light manufacturer's CEO Josef Valchar.

"We welcomed an incredible number of visitors on the booth every day, we met a wide selection of innovative lighting and visual designers all showing a keen interest in our products, we saw representatives from most of the leading UK rental companies ... and winning the Innovation Award was the icing on the cake! We could not have asked for a better show - it absolutely rocked!"

As well as all of the above ... PLASA 2014 was special for Robe in many other ways.

The 1000sq.m Robe Arena was the biggest physic

UK - The final day of PLASA London 2014 followed an evening of celebration and reflection, as the PLASA Awards for Innovation and Sustainability took centre stage. The winners were revealed during a special ceremony, held in the grand surroundings of Robe World - the lighting manufacturer's huge stand.

Industry/exhibitor reaction to the show was positive. Richard 'Fez' Ferriday, brand development manager at Cadac observed: "We have a constant stream of serous visitors who have been really knocked out by the new features in the new version 2.3 operating software for the CDC eight. Surprisingly we have had a lot of theatre people on the booth."

Mercedes Stevao-Boase, marketing and PR at Green Hippo said: "AC Technologies has a great stand space. It's been really busy, lots of overseas visitors from Asia to Eastern Europe."

Karl Christmas, sales & marketing

UK - The PLASA Awards for Innovation (sponsored by Lighting&Sound International) were presented on Tuesday 7 October, revealing the most ground-breaking products of PLASA London 2014. It was a night of celebration and remembrance, as the prestigious Gottelier Award was awarded posthumously to Clay Paky founder, Pasquale 'Paky' Quadri, who recently passed away.

Clay Paky's Chief Operational Officer, Pio Nahum, graciously accepted the Gottelier Award on behalf of his friend and colleague. The other nominees - Richard Belliveau, David Cunningham and Dr Christian Heil - withdrew from the running following the sad news. The lighting industry has lost a great character and a true pioneer.

Every year, PLASA recognises products that demonstrate progress, through attributes like a new style of thinking, an improvement in technical practice, new technology, materials or technique

The Netherlands - Out Board has appointed FACE.nl as the new exclusive distributor covering the Netherlands, of the TiMax2 SoundHub and TiMax Tracker audio processing, playback and showcontrol automation products.

FACE CEO Karel de Piere comments, "We are very happy to widen our Benelux distribution of the TiMax products which we already represent in Belgium for some years. TiMax fits well with our other high quality brands and suits perfectly our core activities in system solutions and integration."

The FACE team's broad skill set and in-depth experience across the live event and installation sectors are a good match for TiMax SoundHub, a scaleable audio matrix and playback server for system management, vocal localisation, sound effects, spatialisation and audio showcontrol in theatrical productions, events and venues as well as AV installations such as museums, the

Romania - With a floor surface of 350,000 sq.m, the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, is the second world's largest administrative building. To celebrate the 555th anniversary of the capital city, the city cultural centre mesmerised a crowd of 100,000 with the world's largest videomapping projection ever made on an administrative building, using over 100 digital projectors.

Projection mapping specialist Maxin10sity was called in by local rental stager 360 Revolution to handle the colossal task of creating a videomapping as well as organising all content, acting as a curator for this artistic performance.

Each animation was a symbolic 5'55'', and boasted a staggering 23,000 sqm projection area. "For a project of this scale, 8K resolution quickly became obvious. We wanted the audience to experience this wow factor while at the same time create some emotion,&qu

UK - Suzanne Wynne of ShowTex has raised over £2000 so far for Macmillan Cancer Support by having her 43cm long hair shorn down to just 6mm on the final day of the PLASA Show. And the hair itself has not gone to waste - it was donated to The Little Princess Trust, which provides real hair wigs for both boys and girls across the UK and Ireland who have lost their own hair through cancer treatment.

Suzanne told LSiOnline: "Prior to the event I was quite overwhelmed to receive so many messages of support . . . doing this had clearly made people think, and some had even decided to do their own fund-raising, which is great. I also met one of the Macmillan ladies, Stephanie, who had been through cancer twice, and the way she faced it and embraced it was quite inspirational - I was in awe. I had bought a wig before-hand, but once I'd spoken to her and listened to what she'd

UK - A Martin Audio OmniLine system has recently been installed in the Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall (ICLH)) at Essex University using Van Damme cable supplied by cabled specialist VDC Trading.

Supplied by LMC Audio and installed by Scan Audio, the micro-line array system was identified as being the perfect solution for the application from the word go. A feature of the hall is that the 1000 seater auditorium can be split into two self-contained 500-seat spaces. The rear walls of the hall move - splitting the auditorium via a central removable divide when it needs to open up.

The installation was carried out by Surrey based Scan Audio. Scan's Dee Couchman specified the Van Damme cable. He said: "We have used Van Damme cable for many years and this project was no different. It has always been the cable of choice for us."

The system is primarily an AMX control with a Marti

UK - Blitz Communications, a GES Global Company, was named as the winner in the Creative Industries category of the LondonlovesExcellence Awards, a celebration of excellence and growth in business backed by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The judges praised Blitz | GES' work during the Olympics, and admired the way it had capitalised on that work to propel growth. They added, "Blitz | GES has made smart investments to accelerate performance and is a very well-managed company with a shining future ahead of it. Despite the tough economic climate, Blitz | GES more than doubled its revenue in the last four years and has grown from 80 to 115 staff while investing over £5m in new equipment and paying of £3m off debt."

The award was presented to Paul Hutton, managing director of Blitz | GES and Munir Samji, the outgoing executive chairman, at a cere

UK - Sennheiser UK has presented its second annual scholarship award of £1,500 to a Buckinghamshire New University Audio and Music Production student.

The scholarship is awarded to students based on their academic performance in their first year, and is part of an education partnership between the University, in Queen Alexandra Road, High Wycombe, and Sennheiser.

It was presented to Callum Paxton, who was among six students shortlisted who were interviewed by Phil Cummings, Sennheiser's marketing projects manager, and singer-songwriter Nellie Bell, who is sponsored by Sennheiser UK.

Callum, who is a second-year student, also received a Neumann TLM 103 microphone as part of his award.

He said: "The money will help to pay for recording equipment and to set up a covers band I will be playing with to finance my university studies.

Phil Cummings said, "All of

UK - The recipient of this year's Gottelier Award, given during the 2014 PLASA Awards ceremony, was founder and managing director of Clay Paky, Pasquale 'Paky' Quadri. The Award, which recognises members of the industry who have made significant and sustained contributions to the advancement of event, entertainment or installation technology, was given posthumously as very sadly Paky passed away on September 6th.

Following his death and as a testament to the huge respect 'Paky' had garnered over the years, the remaining Gottelier Award nominees, Richard Belliveau, David Cunningham and Dr Christian Heil, unanimously agreed to withdraw from the running.

Coming from humble origins the young entrepreneur Pasquale Quadri grew up in an extremely creative environment. The son of a magician he was raised in a small provincial Italian town. 'Paky' established Clay Paky in 1976 and in j

UK - AED Rent UK and AED Distribution who designed their 110sq.m sized stand around a shared lounge area for networking, report a positive experience at PLASA London 2014. "PLASA was a good show where we were able to spend quality time with many LD's, Operators, integrators and rental companies from across the UK," comments David March, managing director at AED Distribution UK.

"It was another key opportunity to communicate and explain the strong solutions that AED can offer to AV Professionals, going from Rent and Distribution, through Lease, Second Hand, Store and even the AED Studios. As Master Distributor for respected brands, we were able to discuss how we provide training and product support to truly underpin our customers so they can concentrate on their key strengths."

HOG Factor, which was organised and hosted for the first time by AED Distribution

Belgium - Tomorrowland is one of the world's most important dance festivals, attracting over 400,000 to this year's 10th Anniversary edition. Spread out over two three-day weekends in the town of Boom in Belgium, Tomorrowland headliners included David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Armin van Buuren and Aviici. Tomorrowland's success and influence now extend around the globe, with new editions being created in Brazil and the USA.

Quality sound is clearly a top priority and Tomorrowland has called on the audio pros at NoizBoyz and Phlippo Productions for the last four years. The sound crew's task is complicated as the Tomorrowland site encompasses multiple stages that are not only in close proximity, but also constantly run simultaneous acts. Reduced sound spillover from stage to stage is a key factor to festival-goers' enjoyment, but the local authorities also impose restrictions on noise l

UK - Clay Paky was the Gold Sponsor of PLASA London 2014 and one of the leading players at the event, which saw an excellent turnout this year, especially from Britain.

The company says: "The Mythos made its world première at PLASA 2014 and won a PLASA Award for Innovation. Clay Paky's founder and chairman Pasquale Quadri, who passed away last month, received a posthumous lifetime achievement award [the Gottelier Award]. The Knight of Illumination Awards, created and organised by the Italian company, were more popular than ever and very highly acclaimed. Above all, Clay Paky's new lights were able to reveal their outstanding performance to the world, thanks to a specially set up, thrilling multimedia show."

Pio Nahum, Clay Paky's CCO, reported that "the success of the demo show went beyond all expectations. Not only was the seating packed every day of the fair,

UK - Following a successful curatorial role at PLASA Focus: Leeds, Soulsound has delivered a series of sessions as part of PLASA 2014's Professional Development Programme. The seminars, which were spread over three days, welcomed experts from the audio industry, who shared knowledge and inspired conversation.

Soulsound presented and coordinated a total of seven sessions, kicking off with Funktion-One founders, Tony Andrews and John Newsham, who were joined by sound consultant, Jim Cousins. The trio, who have an illustrious history in audio, discussed Point Source. Line Array. What do these terms really mean? - providing anecdotes and explanations along the way.

Shure's Tuomo Tolonen followed with Wireless Mastered, which unravelled some of the mysteries of radio frequencies, enabling engineers to be confident in their dealings with radio mics and IEMs, which are

UK - Indie rockers The Courteeners UK headlined the NME / Radio One stages for this year's Reading and Leeds Festivals, complete with a rig of Robe moving lights specified by their lighting designer, Dan Hill.

The band's new studio album Concrete Love was also released a few days prior to playing the two high profile gigs to great acclaim and enrapt audiences, and they also announced a major UK tour for the autumn, so it was quite a big week for everyone involved.

Hill wanted to ramp up the excitement and make the Reading and Leeds appearances as visually fabulous as possible, and designed a high impact specials lighting package which was supplied by UK rental company Siyan. Siyan also supplied the 'house' lighting kit to both NME / Radio One stages at two sites.

He decided to recreate elements of the big tungsten feel that featured very successfully on the last tour,

UK - Black Light used its theatrical expertise to help revamp a classic Newcastle cinema. The Edinburgh-based company installed AV, sound and lighting systems to create a new, flexible entertainment space for the Tyneside Cinema, the city's only full-time independent picture house.

"We drew on our expertise and experience in the worlds of theatre and conference venues to come up the right mix of equipment to suit the client's technical requirements, creative vision and budget," explains Phil Haldane who led the team that carried out the installation. "In particular we used Q-Sys to manage all the AV and lighting systems. We also installed Selecon LED theatrical lights onto Prolyte Truss to allow a wide range of lighting schemes to be easily set up and implemented. These were recalled via an eCUe replay unit over rs232 from the Q-Sys Core."

The solutions Bla

USA - UK loudspeaker manufacturer PMC confirmed at AES in Los Angeles the first sales of its new QB1-A reference monitors - to Capitol Studios, with one pair destined for Studio A, the other for Studio B.

Launched this week at AES, the QB1-A is PMC's new high-end monitor. Designed to provide a new reference standard for medium-to-large-scale recording facilities in terms of accuracy, dynamics, resolution and headroom, it offers over 4800W of power per channel and incorporates analogue and digital inputs, PMC's Advanced Transmission Line (ATL) bass-loading technology, DSP control, and the latest generation of PMC's Class-D amplification and driver designs.

Capitol's engineers and management were part of a network of international industry professionals who provided invaluable feedback on the design of the QB1-A as it evolved. Prototype versions of the speakers have been install

UK - Nick Gray of London UK based creative lighting and visual design practice Renegade pushed the 'risk-taking' and 'imaginative daring' envelope for a number of high profile offsite shows at the latest London Fashion Week - SS15 - with five different lighting designs in five distinctive architectural spaces.

Staging a series of innovative interventions Gray helped showcase collections from leading designers including Anja Hindmarch, Julien Macdonald, Marchesa, Roksanda and Whistles, as well as lighting the main British Fashion Council (BFC) Showspace at Somerset House.

"I wanted to take a completely different approach," he explained. "It's very easy to play safe for these shows, but there is no reason why the lighting can't embrace the same sense of adventure as some of the designers. Being experimental adds another layer of excitement."

As soon as his

UK - After a year's absence, 2014 saw Yamaha Commercial Audio return to exhibit at PLASA London, with the experience surpassing all the company's expectations.

Prior to the show Karl Christmas, sales and marketing manager (UK & ROI), candidly admitted that this year's return was something of a 'toe in the water' exercise at an exhibition which had become more renowned for its lighting content in recent years.

However, he and the rest of the Yamaha team were pleasantly surprised at the quantity of visitors to the company's stand, with the CIS series installation products, QL/CL series digital consoles and RMio64-D Dante/MADI converter attracting particular attention.

"We were very impressed with the number of visitors and the positivity being shown by all the professional audio dealers, rental companies, installers and, indeed, fellow manufacturers that we spoke to throu

USA - CITC says its AquaMax is the first hazer to use completely certified organic fluid, taking the industry to a new level of environmental and health awareness. The haze has absolutely no smell and produces the first and only water-based haze with a two hour hang time, the company says.

"We at Fort Worth Opera, love the AquaMax hazer!" declared Adam Schwartz, director of production. "Our opera singers are particularly sensitive to particulates in the air, and comments about haze and fog are common occurrences, but with the AquaMax, we haven't heard a single complaint! With other hazers, we would have to bypass the smoke detectors in the theatre to avoid any false positives. With the AquaMax, that isn't necessary; we no longer need to compromise safety for theatrical effects."

"Now that we've sold so many of these units, we've been able to lower the

UK - During the golden era of touring, the University of London Union (or ULU as it was then popularly known) was a favoured circuit venue for emerging bands.

With the disbandment of ULU this year (now rebranded as the 'Student Central') the ents committee, under student activities & ents manager Allan Adams, decided to bring its live space (known as 'The Venue') into the 21st century with a complete refurbishment. This included a new end to end Harman Professional sound reinforcement infrastructure designed by Ed Manwaring of EM Communications.

Manwaring has been servicing the Venue's technical requirements for the past three years, and after this long-time advocate of BSS Audio's Soundweb platform demonstrated an elegant way of enabling the Union to route either DJ or live signals to Gallery or Bar on two Soundweb BLU-100s, he was soon dismantling the 12-year old house PA sy

UAE - Dubai-based technical service specialist, the Eclipse Group, operates a programme of continuous investment to keep its inventory of lighting, sound and video solutions at the cutting edge.Recently they made their first investment in SGM's new LED technology with the purchase of 40 P-5 low profile, high output LED Washlights from territorial distributors TechnoPro, having earlier fielded 120 of the fixtures at the inauguration of a major lighting festival in Dubai.This was all the proof that eclipse founder and CEO, Mark Brown needed, although he and his technical team also undertook a critical evaluation against another industry standard architectural colour changer."The result was like chalk and cheese," he said. "The P-5 just blew away the competition. In particular the quality of the red [diode] was hugely impressive."With its 44 x RGBW 10W LEDs creati

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