Lighting

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Europe - ImageCue, the manufacturer of the compact, easy-to-use image server of the same name, has opened an office near Zurich, Switzerland to support its expansion into the European market.

ImageCue has been establishing distribution partners in Europe since the beginning of the year. So far they have entered into partnerships with Gobo & Highlight in the Nordic countries, White Light in the UK, FACE in the Benelux, and Lightpower in Germany and Austria.

Bill Hewlett, CEO of ImageCue LLC says, "In order to better serve our European distributors and dealers we felt that a European base was necessary. ImageCue units for Europe, the Middle-East, and Africa will be assembled at our new facility outside of Zurich."

ImageCue GmbH is a subsidiary company of ImageCue LLC based in the USA. The European branch will be managed by Norbert Schenkel who performed his practical ele

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UK - Next Robe Generation (NRG) is a new initiative launched by Robe UK, offering future lighting professionals the chance to meet other like-minded individuals and access a whole range of interactive social networking and educational opportunities.

It will encompass forums for discussion and the exchange of ideas, product open days and mentoring by leading practitioners and activists in the dynamic world of performance lighting and visuals among many other activities.

Robe is currently working with six participating universities and colleges - RADA, Rose Bruford, Central School of Speech & Drama, LAMDA, Mountview and the University of South Wales - with the intention of widening the list and reach as the NRG concept flourishes and engages.

Anyone in full time industry related studies or who has graduated from a relevant course within the last two years can join NRG.

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Germany - Lasers are becoming more and more popular and especially mobile DJs and smaller nightclubs often request a product that is easy to operate, is capable of projecting tunnel effects, layers and some basic shapes and figures, and most importantly can write custom messages as running text. And of course the laser should be RGB and white light for being able to make the projection fit in with the lighting design.

This is quite demanding, but the new Laserworld EL-500RGB KeyTEX offers all these features. Besides being a normal laser system that can be run stand-alone, in sound-to-light mode or controlled by DMX, it also comes with a remote control plus a keyboard for entering text, animating it and doing colour changes. The Laserworld EL-500RGB KeyTEX is the successor of the Laserworld ES-400RGB, as it has all the features seen previously in the ES-400RGB - but adds much m

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UK - Following a successful Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt, ETC is heading to Leeds for the annual PLASA Focus event, taking place at the Royal Armouries, 10-11 May. The company will present a selection of its newest innovations and most popular products on stand N-C06.

The latest additions to the budget-friendly ColorSource family will be making their UK debut at the show. The just-launched ColorSource consoles deliver hands-on control for modern, small-scale venues. Each console offers plug-and-play setup, an integrated touchscreen, and the ability to run effects, mix LED colours, control moving lights and play back cues. The consoles are available in two sizes, 20 and 40, with optional audiovisual capability.

ETC's popular ColorSource Spot and PAR fixtures are newly available in Deep Blue versions. These affordable fixtures use an array that offers richer, more saturated b

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USA - When Bud Light decided to throw a party at South by Southwest Music Festival, they went all out with a full blown production. Working with Mosaic and LiveNation, Bandit Lites provided the lighting package for both the Brazos Event Centre and the rousing upstairs party, where musical performances throughout the weekend included Bleachers, A$AP Ferg, Yo Gotti, The Struts, MisterWives, Santigold, and Bloc Party with it all capped off Saturday night with The Roots SXSW Jam featuring Big Grams (Big Boi and Phantogram) and other special guests.

With the party taking place in an event centre with a low trim height, the crew was tasked with coming up with a design that made up for the tight space and limited mounting options.

"Dizzy Gosnell and project manager Matt King came up with a great way to mount the fixtures to the existing house beams with limited impact on the over

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USA - Lighting designer Susan Nicholson used Elation Professional's Platinum Spot 35 Pro moving head luminaire for front lighting, backlighting and texturing on a recent Off Broadway production of the new musical drama Death for Five Voices

Staged at the Sheen Centre for Thought and Culture in New York City, and inspired by the life and work of Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, Death for Five Voices is a complex musical that changes locations on a static set. "The show does not call for spot lights," Susan Nicholson explains, "So moving lights were my answer as a way to be able to pop characters out. It gave me an opportunity to draw the audience's attention to the important action on stage."

Nicholson used the Platinum Spot 35 Pro subtly as front light and highlights with fixtures positioned over the audience, splitting centre, and another located upstage

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The Netherlands - Dutch house DJ Fedde Le Grand recently played his Grand 2016 event at Amsterdam's 20,000 capacity Ziggo Dome, which was completely sold out and featured a spectacular lighting design by JJ Rotte from Dutch lighting and visual creative practice Light Image - and over 200 Robe moving lights.

JJ has been Fedde's lighting designer since 2013. When the first Grand live concept was staged in 2015 he came on board to evolve the lighting, and asked Bas van der Poel and Jeroen van der Velden of Light Image - both of whom he'd known for some years - to assist in what was a complex design process. He joined the imaginative lighting design, programming and operating practice based in Utrecht full time at the end of last year.

This year's Grand was a one off show demanding high-impact visuals with minimal time on site and intense pressure to produce the spectacular re

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Australia - MPH Australia is a busy lighting rental company based in Melbourne, headed by Matt Hansen, a well-known personality in the Australian production world.

The company has enthusiastically embraced Robe as an in-house brand - with LEDWash 600s, MMX Spots, LEDBeam 100s - and was an early adopter of Robe's game-changing BMFL series fixtures.

MPH started as 'Matt's Party Hire' 11 years ago with the tongue-in-cheek trestle table and balloons logo for which Matt is still known and loved, a free-spirited attitude to life plus a selection of niche LED products, control and media servers also offering bespoke and off-beat lighting system designs.

This was a great success, and through his contacts, imagination and ability to think 'out-of-the-box' Matt designed and toured internationally with a number of top Australian bands, leaving his own kit with his colleagues and

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UK - Hawthorn has been awarded the contract to supply lighting and crew for upcoming performances by 80's British new wave group, OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark).

The band, which has sold over 40m records worldwide, is returning to the stage to perform classic 1980's albums Dazzle Ships and Architecture & Morality in full, with performances kicking off at a sell-out gig on 9 May 2016 at London's Royal Albert Hall. Further shows have been announced in Germany, with the band now also playing in Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg.

The Concert Touring division in Hawthorn is drawing upon its extensive range of hire equipment, supplying lighting to specification, including Clay Paky Wash, Clay Paky Sharpy, Robe BMFL Spot and Martin Atomic 3000 Strobe fixtures. Hawthorn is also supplying two members of crew for the four dates.

Mick Freer, head of concert tou

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In The Vatican - The Edge has performed four songs in the Sistine Chapel to raise awareness for cancer prevention, becoming the first contemporary artist to play at the venue. The guitarist played for around 200 doctors, researchers and philanthropists as part of a conference at the Vatican on regenerative medicine. He played acoustic guitar and was backed by a choir of seven Irish teenagers. He performed Leonard Cohen's If It Be Your Will, and versions of three U2 songs. The Edge, whose real name is David Evans, lost his father to cancer last month. He is on the board of several foundations working in aid of cancer prevention.

Park Life - T in the Park will go ahead at Strathallan in July after councillors granted the festival a one-year public entertainment licence. The approval followed a five-hour Perth and Kinross Council meeting attended by organisers and o

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UK - Following on from PLASA's backstage tour of Sadler's Wells in March, a visit has been arranged to the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

The Royal Shakespeare Company will be welcoming PLASA members on 24th May 2016 to take part in an immersive backstage tour covering the transformation of Elizabeth Scott's iconic 1932 cinema-style Royal Shakespeare Theatre into a definitive new environment for performing the works of Shakespeare.

This was a major construction programme and Stage Electrics were involved on-site in the realisation of this transformation for over four years working to the design brief created by Charcoalblue (theatre consultants), Buro Happold (engineers) and Bennetts Associates (architects).

This project was a huge collaborative effort with a number of different contributors all handpicked by the RSC. More r

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UK - Following its successful launch in the US in 2015, Marq Lighting, a new player in the entertainment lighting sector, hasannounced the global rollout of its diverse range of innovative professional lighting products.

Marq Lighting is an independent brand owned by music industry heavyweight inMusic. inMusic has a long-standing reputation designing, engineering, manufacturing and marketing twelve different brands of music recording and performance equipment and software from influential lines including Numark, Denon DJ, Akai Professional, M-Audio and Alto Professional.

Marq was born from a long-established pedigree of innovative in-house music/DJ design and engineering, where the needs and requirements of artists and performers are understood and experienced first-hand. This experience offers a unique perspective that directly benefits the design and specification of the

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USA - Elation Professional has added to its family of LED strobes with the new Protron 3K Color, a high-power LED strobe light featuring 240 x CREE XLamp 3W RGBW LEDs and 40,000 lumens of power for an explosion of colour. The Protron 3K Colour not only packs a powerful punch of coloured light - and without thermal issues - it provides a much better ROI compared to conventional 3K Xenon strobes on the market, says the company.

Utilizing special optics and new LED driver technology, the Protron 3K Color includes built-in strobe effect macros like burst, pulse and lightning for different effects possibilities and can even operate full on without causing thermal-out issues (output at full max 10 seconds) thanks to regulated silent cooling fans that keep the strobe from overheating.

The Protron 3K Color uses much less power than Xenon strobes (peak power output is 800W) and is

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One of the most highly tipped rock 'n' roll exhibitions of all time - the Rolling Stones' Exhibitionism at the Saatchi Gallery in London - uses technology on a grand scale to create the realism of the band's early history, and enhance the visitor experience through seven separate zones.

Produced and curated by Australian event company IEC (International Entertainment Consulting), the lighting design has been created by another major event company, Woodroffe Bassett Design (WBD). They, in turn, have specified a number of LED fixtures from GLP, who are the nominated exclusive automated lighting partner.

The inventory was supplied and installed through partners White Light, under the project management of Simon Needle. This included 25 GLP impression X4, each featuring 19 high output RGBW LEDs, along with six of the new X4 Bar 20 high performance battens. All appear in the 'P

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USA - Indoor cycling is a fitness activity that has raced into the fast lane. According to one study, the number of dedicated cycling centres in the US increased by over 20 percent last year. A visit to Ride Delray Indoor Cycling Studio makes it easy to understand why this trend has taken off. Guests at the sparkling new facility aren't simply exercising, they're participating in a fitness party, cycling together in choreographed rhythmic moves to the beat of lively music. Contributing to the good feelings is an immersive lightshow created with a collection of Chauvet Professional and Iluminarc LED fixtures.

"Lighting is a key part of the experience at Ride Delray. It helps to set the mood and engages people," said Jay Krause of Sound and Lighting Solutions, who designed the centre's lighting system. "The owners of this centre, Susan Albinder and Linda Besman, recognized the i

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USA - Three draft standards have been added to the ESTA public review page at http://tsp.esta.org/tsp/documents/public_review_docs.php. People materially affected by the standards are invited to review them and to offer comments, if they chose, before the reviews end on 27 June. The three draft standards are:

BSR E1.40, Recommendations for the Planning of Theatrical Dust Effects

ANSI E1.40-2011 is being revised to warn against deflagration--deflagration being the technical term for the wave of flame that burned hundreds of people at a water park in Taiwan last year. Other changes include a regrouping of types of dusts and changing MSDS references to SDS references.

BSR E1.41, Recommendations for the Measurement of Entertainment Luminaires Utilizing Solid State Light Sources

ANSI E1.41-2012 is being revised to specify that the Fidelity Index (Rf) rating, as defined

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Macau - Studio City carries the strongest entertainment theming of any resort in Macau and the epic movie theatre vision is carried throughout every part of the building. The fa

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USA - In the 1970s, the Skyway 6 in Minneapolis was one of the biggest downtown multi-cineplexes in the US. Twenty years later, its glory days as a movie theatre gone, it stood worn and neglected, before being reborn as the Skyway Theatre, one of the hottest electronic music venues anywhere. Virtually every major EDM artist has performed at this spacious 2,000-seat Minneapolis icon, but the same cavernous qualities that make this a magical place to take in a concert can also create special challenges for a designer wanting to create big looks on stage.

Being from Minneapolis and having designed for the Skyway Theatre before, lighting designer Ryan Warffuel and VJ/content creator Max Koehler of Antic Studios were familiar with this challenge. They were therefore ready to "fill space" when they created a rig for the red-hot Canadian duo Adventure Club at Skyway, using a collecti

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South Africa - Tickets for South Africa's International Cape Town Jazz Festival invariably sell out in a heartbeat, as aficionados from around the world descend on the city every year to hear the sounds of artists like Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJohnette.

For local residents unable to attend the acclaimed festival, its organizers put on a Free Jazz Concert in Green Market Square. Featuring some of the artists from the festival as well as diverse mix of local talent, the free concert in the heart of old Cape Town also serves up eye-popping visual excitement, which in 2016 took the form of a Jean-Pierre Willson designed lightshow featuring a collection of Rogue R2 Washes from Chauvet Professional.

"The festival promoters do this every year to give back to the city, and allow those that cannot buy -- or missed out on the deadline for -- tickets to attend," said Willson, owner

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Europe - British alt rock band-of-the-moment The 1975 are touring the UK and Europe with an inspired video screen and light staging concept created by show director Tobias Rylander and augmented by Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330, Mythos and Alpha Profile 1500 fixtures.

In a nod to the light artist James Turrell, the staging is intended to look like 'art pieces' in which the band perform. Four 'monoliths' of LED screens stand proudly on the stage, backed by an even larger video screen. Together, the screens display imagery that plays with the audience's perceptions of depth, colour and light.

To cut through the colourful video, Rylander specified 36 x Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures, which are used as back light. They are rigged in three groups of five on the floor behind the band and the set, with a mirrored truss upstage. The full lighting and video package was supplied by VER.

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UK - Mark Burnett, former business development manager at Stage Electrics, has joined technical production expert, Hawthorn, to support the ongoing development of its technical equipment Hire service within the touring theatre sector.

Working closely with Hawthorn's Head of Hire, David Slater, Mark will raise the profile of the company's high-quality equipment Hire service to touring, regional & West End theatre productions, bolstering Hawthorn's increasing reputation in the marketplace, in line with its commitment to delivering an excellent customer experience.

He will be representing Hawthorn on Stand R-308 at Plasa Focus in Leeds on 10-11 May 2016.

Mark joins Hawthorn at an exciting time for the Hire service which has seen staggering 90% growth over the last six months, of commissions to supply equipment to touring theatre productions.

Mark said, "This is a real

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) are showcasing the latest product highlights from their extensive brand portfolio at the PLASA Focus Leeds 2016 Show - Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK, stand N-E02, 10-11 May.

A leading one-stop provider of professional equipment to the entertainment industry, AC-ET will be showcasing a selection of the very latest lighting, audio, rigging, video, and film & TV solutions available from their vast portfolio of over 200 leading brands and five specialist sales divisions.

The stand will feature the very latest premium performance entertainment & broadcast LED solutions from Chroma-Q. Designed and built to exacting standards in North America, the award-winning range has been adopted by many leading designers and specifiers for some of today's most demanding and prestigious lighting applications.

Highlights include the innovative new

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USA - Panic! at the Disco wrapped their spring tour with a lighting package provided by Bandit Lites. The American pop/rock band known for their clever lyrics and distinctive sound released their fifth studio album Death of a Bachelor earlier this year, and is gearing up for a co-headlining summer tour with Weezer.

Lighting designer Alex Specht of Spechtrum Lighting created a multi-layered look using a floor package that symmetrically parted a centre drum riser with Martin MAC Vipers and Chauvet RH1 Rogues along the deck, road cases and four 6ft truss towers with alternately hung Chauvet Nexus 4x4s and Atomic Strobes.

"When travelling with only a floor package, I like to make sure I have all of the elements to create various layers," said Specht. By layering spot fixtures for colour saturation and gobo effects, beam fixtures to cut through with sharp aerial effects,

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USA - Philadelphia-based lighting designer Michael Korsch selected Clay Paky Alpha Spot QWO 800 and Alpha Profile 800 ST moving lights as part of the rig for the world premiere of Don Quixote at the Pennsylvania Ballet.

A lighting and scenic designer who frequently works in dance, Korsch has many years' experience using Clay Paky products. A big fan of the Alpha Spot HPE 1500, he incorporated three of them into his lighting design for Alchemia, a MOMIX production that premiered in 2013 and has been touring internationally ever since.

Don Quixote was created by Angel Corella, artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, with music by Ludwig Minkus. The new ballet features authentic Spanish-flavoured dance and comic interludes to bring to life a story based on Cervantes's classic novel. The production was staged from 3-13 March at the Academy of Music i

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