Italy - Vasco Rossi is currently engaged in his summer Live Kom 15 stadium tour which is completely sold out, and will see the legendary singer play to nearly 1m fans, with another stunning lighting and show design by his long term LD, Giovanni Pinna.

This year Giovanni has incorporated 34 Robe BMFL Blades and 16 BMFL Spots into the design, which are the work-horse spot fixtures of the tour. He has also deployed 100 of Robe's LEDBeam 100s which are dotted around the back wall of the main set. One of Italy's leading designers, he has been using Robe products in his work for some years, but this is the first full-on project for which he has specified BMFL Spots.

Giovanni worked closely with Claudio Santucci and Florian Boje from set design company Gioforma who produced the imposing industrial stage set constructed from aluminium and fabricated by Rome based rental company BOTW,

UK - HOG Factor, the lighting design and programming competition for HOG4 Consoles, is to enjoy its second UK outing at the PRO Show at the NEC Birmingham on Sunday 13 September.

HOG Factor, an initiative from European Master Distributor AED Distribution in partnership with High End Systems, is coming back to the UK. The competition was first held at PLASA 2014, then most recently toured to Germany for ProLight+Sound Frankfurt.

The competition is open to young students currently enrolled in a full-time UK Entertainment technology related education course, or working at the starting level in a UK lighting rental production house. There will be six teams, each with two members, competing against each other. In advance they will be presented with a lighting rig comprising High End Systems Luminaires along with a set piece of music. Teams have to design a lighting show using the l

UK - The Mentalists opened at the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End this week. Written by Richard Bean, the award-winning writer of the international hit One Man, Two Guvnors, the play stars The Office co-creator Steven Merchant in his West End debut alongside Steffan Rhodri, best known for his role as Dave Coaches in Gavin and Stacey.

After providing the lighting equipment for the Wyndham's Theatre's previous show American Buffalo, White Light makes an immediate return to the venue to supply the lighting support for the new production.

Rich Mence, production electrician on the show, states, "For The Mentalists, I worked alongside David Plater, the lighting designer, who wanted to create a very naturalistic feel. As the play takes place during different times of the day, we had to reflect this on what was a static set."<

UK - Technical theatre student Bradley Allen has used an Avolites Titan Mobile armed with the new Titan V9 operating system to light a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Colchester Institute.

This production saw Extended Diploma Acting students perform Shakespeare's famed romantic comedy, following events surrounding the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta.

Allen, now in his second year of study, chose Avolites from a number of console manufacturers, controlling a lighting rig including 24 dimmers, four Robe Colorwash 575XTs, two Robe Colorspot 575s, and both Chauvet and Visage LED parcans from the Titan Mobile console.

"The brief for the lighting was that it should look timeless," says Allen. "The lighting process needed to be smooth and not cause issues. I felt Titan offered the most useful features for me."

The network conn

The Netherlands - Robert Juliat's Aramis and Lancelot long-throw models have been out in full force in the Netherlands for two of the country's most exuberant parties.

Lighting designer Martin Beekhuizen used no less than 16 RJ Aramis 2500W followspots on Amsterdam's biggest party night of the year as huge audiences flooded into the Amsterdam Arena for the 11th Toppers in Concert extravaganza.

Billed as 'the singalong festival of the year', the annual event filled the massive arena - home of Amsterdam's Ajax football team - for five nights at the end of May 2015. Audiences of over 70,000 people per night - dressed in white with 'a colourful touch of summer' - sang along with Dutch superstars, Gerard Joling, Jeroen van der Boom and Rene Froger, and special guest stars Danny de Munk, Edzillia Rombley, Andre and Roxanne Hazes, David Bisbal and Village People, at this bright, bold

UK - The Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI) 2015 has announced the main sponsors of this year's prestigious event.

The Awards, which celebrate the creative talents of international lighting and digital content designers working in the UK in the sectors of TV, Theatre and Concert Touring and Events, is delighted to welcome industry heavyweights: OSRAM, Ambersphere Solutions, MA Lighting, Hawthorn, Robert Juliat, Ayrton and XL Video, who have generously supported the Awards for several years running (some since its inaugural year). Alongside them are FIX8Group and Light Initiative, who are new to the event. The ceremony will take place at East London's Troxy club on Sunday 4 October.

"We are very proud to be sponsors of the KOI Awards. It is an amazing ceremony which last year we were very happy to attend," says Valére Huart-Gyors, Ayrton. "Seeing the most

China - For years, the Hong Kong government has emphasised the need to support local arts and cultural heritage. As part of that effort, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCD) is building a new performing arts complex, the Xiqu Centre, which is expected to be completed in 2017. The complex will house the Tea House Theatre, a 200-seat venue for Chinese opera - with an emphasis on Cantonese opera - that will help increase public interest in the art form.

To prepare for the opening of the Xiqu Centre, the WKCD and the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts are working together on a number of experimental shows being staged at the Academy, where they can test the staging, seating and equipment. ETC LED luminaires feature prominently in the programme, which is being used to shed a new light on the classic operas.

Lighting designer Billy Chan integrates western stage ligh

USA - Ayrton MagicDot-R made its US debut with Bruno Mars at Rock In Rio Las Vegas in May. Lighting designer Cory FitzGerald of Seven Design Works used a configuration of 184 of the new fixtures on the singer's closing performance at this year's festival which was hosted for the first time in the US. FitzGerald's design also featured an array of 128 Ayrton IntelliPix-R panels deployed as fascias fronting the stage-wide risers that backed Mars and his band.

FitzGerald has used Ayrton fixtures on several shows for Mars, including New Year shows at The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas and NBC's Saturday Night Live. FitzGerald's lighting for Mars' one-off Rock in Rio set, however, was an evolution of his designs for the singer's previous shows. "I wanted to create a similar visual vibe to the SNL show but was looking for something very specific that would bring an almost retro lo

USA - Chroma-Q Color Force 12 multi-purpose LED fixtures were recently specified by lighting sales and production company, E2i Design for an ambitious show at Michigan's Brighton High School.

The school's musical theatre troupe was the first in the state to perform the spectacular Tony Award-winning new musical, Nice Work If You Can Get It.

E2i Design's Josh Holowicki passionately supports the school's theatre in a number of ways - as vice chairman of the board of directors, as volunteer technical director and scenic designer, and as producer. As the technical director, he's responsible for all audio, video and lighting.

"We recently redesigned the entire lighting system in the theatre, investing in 36 Color Force 12 units for the house rig," says Josh. "We use them for cyc lighting as well as general stage washes, and without a doubt they are a spectac

Romania - Showline SL NITRO 510C strobes have made their debut on the third edition of Electric Castle, Romania's biggest music festival, becoming the first LED strobes to be used on the event in its short history.

The award-winning dance festival takes place in Banffy Castle, a 14th century monument in the Romanian village of Bontida. Twenty-two of the powerful Showline strobes, supplied by ASC Systems, were an integral part of the main stage rig, where such big name acts as The Prodigy, Rudimental and Fat Boy Slim performed.

"We've been suppliers to the festival since its first year," says ASC Systems' Raluca Dumitru. "This year several of the lighting designers asked for LED strobes in their brief and so we chose to invest in the SL NITRO 510C. We were confident in our decision on account of Philips' fantastic reputation for high quality entertainment lightin

UK - Now in its 37th year, the Heritage Events Leeds Castle Concerts are considered the premier event of their kind in the Kent Summer calendar and this year's show proved no exception with over 12,000 visitors taking to the lawns of the castle.

Working with lighting designer Theo Cox, Aurora supplied lighting, rigging and crew to the production to create an on stage lighting spectacular to complement the existing installation at the beautiful medieval venue.

Keeping the power requirement low and the green credentials high, a variety of LED products were deployed including Martin MAC Aura and MAC Quantum Wash to add colour and movement to performances by The Definitive Rat Pack, who kicked off the show with a touch of Vegas, followed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Rigby.

The low power approach was augmented by generator provider Midas who ran Biodeies

USA - Every year since its founding in 2006, Life in Color, the world's largest paint party, can be counted on for three things: drawing huge crowds (last year over 600,000 turned out around the world for the paint-drenching fun), featuring EDM's biggest names like Calvin Harris and Steve Aoki, and coming up with some of the most wildly creative show themes on the festival circuit. The 2015 Life in Color Big Bang World Tour is no exception. The crowds have been thick, the artists like Dillon Francis and Bingo Players have been big, and the highly original theme breaks the mould into a million colourful pieces.

The tour's "Big Bang" name says it all. So does its tag line The Creation of Color. Asking the big question, "How did colour come to be?" the tour is built around a story line of the world's colour being imperilled only to be rescue

UK - Colour Sound Experiment supplied lighting - including over 300 moving lights - to the four principal stages at new UK festival Wild Life, together with their new high definition proprietary 7 mm LED screen for one stage. The weekend line-up was presented by two of the country's leading electronic artists - Disclosure and Rudimental - both also main stage headliners.

The event was staged over two days at Shoreham Airport in Sussex near Brighton, and enjoyed - together with excellent weather - by capacity crowds of 35,000 music fans each day.

Colour Sound won a competitive quote to supply the four main stages of the event which was organised and promoted by SJM. Haydn 'H' Cruickshank comments, "It's always really exciting to be involved in something fresh, new and different and we were delighted to be working on this one. It was a great chance to put the new screen thr

Australia - Vivid Sydney is the largest festival of light, music and ideas in the Southern Hemisphere and this year, Pyrmont's harbourside has been transformed into a buzzing multi-sensory, engaging zone where you control the entertainment.

The precinct features a number of interactive installations including Mission Control which gives the public the opportunity to create their own two-minute light show. Once you've selected your music track, you then get to play with forty-four Clay Paky Sharpys and ten Mythos fixtures positioned on The Star building and Sky Terrace.

Control, housed in a glass booth located in the park opposite The Star, consists of a large 60 inch touch screen controller with selectable colour, movement and effects.

"There's also a Leap Motion Controller, which is an infra-red detector that allows you to control the intensity of the lights by

UK - Blackpool Council has announced the appointment of WarPro as specialist contractors for the town's new Illuminations project.

As announced in January, the resort's world famous illuminations display will this year be enhanced this year following a £2m cash boost from the Coastal Communities Fund.

With a further £420,000 being contributed by Blackpool Council contributing and public arts body LeftCoast, the £2.42m 'LightPool' project will give a new lease of life to the flagship attraction by enhancing the display and creating new exciting new light shows, events and features across the town centre.

New state-of-the-art signage will be included at key sites, guiding people around town and leading them to the different installations and new Illuminations 'ambassadors' will also be employed, supplemented by additional volunteers, to improve the visitors'

Czech Republic - Backstage Academy's BA Visual Production students have triumphed on production for The Society of British Theatre Designers' Make/Believe showcase at the Prague Quadrennial, where they created an immersive environmental projection mapping of a room in the Clam-Gallasuv Palác and won the Special PQ Jury Award.

"This has been a great collaborative process with creative and technical dialogue between professional designers, students and projection mapping experts. We are seeing the work in a completely new way," remarked Make/Believe curator Kate Burnett.

The Special PQ Jury Award, judged by a team of top international directors and designers, recognises "the richness and diversity of an exhibition that shows high quality work from across the spectrum of contemporary performance design - in a variety of venues, and embracing space, light, media an

India - Just before the PALM expo in Mumbai, Laserworld welcomed a new member to the company group: Laserworld India was founded as a Laserworld company in New Delhi. Managing director of Laserworld India, Arun Kalra, comments, "I've been working in the entertainment technology industry for many years and have a huge business network all over India. With the huge product portfolio and the different product levels of Laserworld I'm very confident that we can meet the large demand that is in our market here."

Laserworld India will mainly act as sales hub, but will also maintain a service department for show laser service and repairs for India and surrounding countries. All brands that are manufactured or distributed through the Laserworld Group will be available through Laserworld India for the Indian market.

The new website for Laserworld India will provide further in

USA - Lighting designer Preston Hoffman created a dynamic and flexible production lighting design for the 2015 Summer Camp Festival staged at Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe, Illinois. His stage, the Moonshine Stage, was based primarily around 16 x Robe BMFL Spots and 10 x Robe Pointe moving lights.

It was the second time that Boston-based Preston, also LD for headlining jam band moe. had worked at the four day event. The lighting equipment was supplied by Chicago-based Performance Lighting, a recent investor in BMFLs and Pointes.

A major challenge for the Moonshine Stage lighting design was that any equipment - trussing, set, lighting, etc. - had to be rigged off two roof beams with limited weight loading that were part of the semi-permanent stage's structure. Similar to the concept of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, this encapsulates the spirit of the Festival, and has b

USA - Hundreds of Elation lighting fixtures were used again this year on Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas, North America's largest dance music festival, with the latest incarnation of the electronic rave taking place 19-21 June at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Lighting supply companies Visions Lighting, AG Production Services, Felix Lighting and Pro Systems all supplied Elation gear to the Vegas version of EDC with many of this year's awe-inspiring lighting and stage looks again by SJ Lighting.

With over 400,000 attendees for the three-day event, producers Insomniac brought in some of the world's biggest EDM artists and production talent to supply the heart-thumping atmosphere. Elation products wowed massive crowds on Stage 7 (Pro Systems), Bass Pod (Visions Lighting), Circuit Grounds (AG Lighting) and Cosmic Meadow (Felix Lighting) stages with several of Elation's newest lum

Sweden - Melodifestivalen is Sweden's national contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest, where their winner candidate is found. For the stage setup, lighting designer, Fredrik Jönsson implemented both X-5 strobes and P-5 wash lights. Jönsson here explains the effects he wished to achieve using these two specific types of LED fixtures from SGM:

"The X-5s were scattered around the lighting rig downstage to add glitter and bursts that would penetrate the air through the set and give more energy in the camera shots. We mainly used the segment feature with fast randomly chases to add that extra razzmatazz during choruses and such.

"The P-5s were brought in for a specific act to be used as a strong colour signature and as uplight through a glass floor for a custom made transparent podium. They were purely used in a strong and vibrant red that became a very strong sign

UK - American rapper Kanye West's headline gig at this year's Glastonbury Festival has gone viral due to the incredible 792-strong PAR can rig controlled by 16 Avolites ART2000 48 way 16A dimmers and 2 Avolites Power Cubes.

Lighting experts, Elstree Light & Power (ELP) supplied the rig and the dimmers for the huge rectangular array of PAR cans, which moved up and down during West's set as 135,000 revellers watched in awe at the Pyramid Stage.

ELP's Chris Rand oversaw the delivery of the kit, reporting directly to Kanye West's 'people'.

"Avolites is the preferred dimmer supplier for ELP, and we've been a long time fan of Avolites kit with a large stock of Avolites ART2000 dimmers and Power Cubes," says Chris Rand. "We came in rather late on this project and immediately turned to in-house Avolites dimmers - we regard them as the industry standard for robust, rel

Germany - With new opening times, a new hall layout and a new "Education and Associations" area, it's all-change for Prolight+Sound 2016. Taking place at Messe Frankfurt from 5 to 8 April 2016, the exhibition is moving to the eastern part of the expansive venue. Here it will occupy six halls, two outdoor arenas, a new indoor arena and a new, bigger outdoor area all targeting specific themes.

Organisers comment: "At last year's event more than 900 exhibitors welcomed over 42,000 visitors to their booths. In 2016, we are moving to the east of the Frankfurt Exhibition Centre in order to accommodate our increase in size. Prolight+Sound is the perfect industry forum for face-to face discussions and for developing your business networks. Benefit, too, from the synergies of the parallel Musikmesse and meet the right target groups for you."

Within the framework of

USA - Following the completion of the 2015 cycle of PLASA Focus events in Orlando and Kansas City, a full review was undertaken to ascertain the progress and success of the PLASA events produced in the North American market over the last 4 years. While some progress had been achieved over this period it was decided that significant change was necessary to create an event that better satisfied the business needs of the exhibitors, creating a profitable event for all those involved.

To fully explore and understand the changes necessary the decision of the PLASA Governing Body and the PLASA Executive Management has been to take a hiatus from producing new events in 2016.

Christopher Toulmin, PLASA's Director of the Events Division comments: "Despite considerable financial investment from PLASA and a great deal of hard work from the various members of the events team in the U

USA - The 2015 FIRST Championship pitted 900 international youth teams against each other in an exciting, weekend-long event at the end of April. Using robots they had designed, built and programmed themselves, each team competed in a series of qualifying rounds focused on this year's theme Recycle Rush.

Staged across five venues, the championship's main events were held at the Edward Jones Dome, home of the St. Louis Rams. New Orleans-based entertainment design and production firm, Solomon Group, was asked to light not only the ceremonies and competitions, but also the concert that capped off the weekend - which it did successfully with the help of Martin Professional's versatile lighting fixtures.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) hosts several events throughout the year that target elementary and high school students. The annual champi

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