UK / USA - British sound rental company, SSE Audio Group and California-based Sound Image have announced the launch of a transatlantic joint venture. Dubbed UAC (United Audio Companies), the venture has been designed to enable both firms to improve the international support they can offer to their clients on both sides of the Atlantic.

This new arrangement means clients touring in Europe and the USA will benefit from a common touring infrastructure and around-the-clock support, so acts can work seamlessly on either side of the Atlantic. "The arrangement works because it places the full resources of a national PA company at the disposal of the touring act in the locality, whether in the States or in Europe," the companies' statement says.

"It's not just a US Compan

UK - To create a spectacular opening for the 2015 Edinburgh International Festival, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, 59 Productions, with the Edinburgh International Festival, created The Harmonium Project.

The free outdoor event drew in crowds of approximately 19,500 people and combined the music of John Adams' choral work Harmonium, made especially by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Edinburgh Festival Chorus conducted by Peter Oundjian, with visually stunning projection mapping onto the Usher Hall in central Edinburgh.

The 34-minute performance of The Harmonium Project integrated scientific data captured with the support of the Centre of Design and Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, who collaborated on the project to examine the effects singing has on both the performer and the listener.

Having worked with them succ

UK - Touring England and Scotland with over 40 performances, Le Mark's Harmony floor provided Blood Wedding with a stunning high gloss floor. Performance after performance, Harmony Gloss remained resilient and easily portable between venues.

A co-production of Dundee Rep, Graeae Theatre Company and Derby Theatre, the production toured at the beginning of the year. Renowned for the ability to lay flat almost instantly from the roll and just as easy to roll up for storage, Harmony Gloss made an ideal touring performance floor.

"We were very pleasantly surprised how well the floor stood up to the heavy use as we expected a high gloss floor like that to start showing signs of wear and tear much more," says Nils Den Hertog, head of production, Dundee Rep Theatre. "As it was, with regular cleaning, it lasted right through till the end of the run."

(Jim E

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USA - The summer of music festivals continues for Bandit Lites as they once again teamed up with lighting designer Seth Jackson and the team at 3SRCreative to provide lighting for Lollapalooza, one of the biggest musical events of every year.

A record-tying 300,000 filled Grant Park to see the hottest EDM acts, legends and the music industry's hottest chart toppers. "When collaborating with Bandit on these large scale projects they have two secret weapons: Dizzy Gosnell and Shawn Lear," said Jackson.

"These projects have millions of tiny details, lots of paperwork, lots of follow-up, and a lot engineering requirements. Dizzy's ability to organize everything coming from the shop, with everything changing constantly, and with all I send his way is quite remarkable. This, of course, then falls in the same time window as Shawn sorting the equipment and building the

USA - The summer of music festivals continues for Bandit Lites as they once again teamed up with lighting designer Seth Jackson and the team at 3SRCreative to provide lighting for Lollapalooza, one of the biggest musical events of every year.

A record-tying 300,000 filled Grant Park to see the hottest EDM acts, legends and the music industry's hottest chart toppers. "When collaborating with Bandit on these large scale projects they have two secret weapons: Dizzy Gosnell and Shawn Lear," said Jackson.

"These projects have millions of tiny details, lots of paperwork, lots of follow-up, and a lot engineering requirements. Dizzy's ability to organize everything coming from the shop, with everything changing constantly, and with all I send his way is quite remarkable. This, of course, then falls in the same time window as Shawn sorting the equipment and building the

China - Allen & Heath's GLD digital system has been installed in the theatre of the new Oriental Media Centre building in Beijing.

Located in the heart of the CBD business district, the new skyscraper provides office space for the city's media companies, and the building's M Theatre is designed to host residents' conferences, events, live performances and banquets. The Theatre's seats can be fully retracted and the stage is expandable, enabling various configurations to be used for different events.

Sanecore supplied and installed a comprehensive audio system to meet the varied application needs of the venue.

At the heart of the sound system is a GLD-80 mixer with accompanying AR2412 positioned on stage, plus a Symetrix SymNet Solus 8 is employed as the audio processor.

"GLD not only features an intuitive control interface but also powerful processing. The ability to

Maldives - Working for local technical production and solutions company Pop Joy headed by Asad Haneef, London-based large format projection specialist The Projection Studio (TPS) was asked to assist in providing spectacular pitch video projections at the Galolhu National Football Stadium in Malé, for the Maldives 50th Independence celebrations.

TPS was asked to get involved in the project because of its reputation of projecting onto spectacular buildings and for major ceremonial events which have included the Closing Ceremony of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.

TPS had just three weeks from receiving confirmation to producing finished content for the 30-minute finale section of the show, which featured a cast of hundreds, the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) marching band and display team, sky divers and 40 members of the MNDF - which all u

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UK - The Knight of Illumination Awards (KOI) Theatre judging panel has announced its eagerly anticipated shortlist for this year's ceremony, which will take place at London's glamorous Troxy club on Sunday 4 October.

Organised by the ALD, STLD, The Fifth Estate Ltd and Clay Paky and now in its eighth year, the KOI Awards is a celebration of the creative talents of international lighting and digital content designers working in the UK across TV, theatre and concert touring and events.

The theatre shortlist is the first to be revealed, after a panel of senior critics from national newspapers deliberated over the finest lighting and video work from the categories of Dance, Musicals, Opera and Plays. The shortlist is as follows:

Dance - Lucy Carter for Woolf Works, Royal Ballet, Howard Harrison for Edward Scissorhands, Theatre Royal, Plymouth, Sadler's Wells

Australia - Rockhampton's Pilbeam Theatre, in Queensland, is a thriving 1000-seat lyric that sees a wide variety of productions on its stage. Concerts, musicals and corporate events are regular fixtures, and with a thriving community arts scene, often quickly produced and tightly turned around. Ashley Salta, the theatre's technical supervisor, often employs projected media effects on their in-house produced productions to save budget, space, time and effort.

"We produce a lot of musical theatre," explained Ashley. "We often project video content like rain, clouds or other moving textures onto the set or cloth to bring the stage to life. It also means we can avoid creating a piece of set with that imagery on it. Until recently, we'd been using QLab, but that meant someone had to operate it separately, and we had to load in content for each new show. So I was lookin

Spain - The third edition of La Voz Espana, the Spanish version of the popular TV singing contest was won by an ecstatic Antonio José, coached by singer songwriter Antonio Orozco. The series generated a massive amount of excitement and record viewing figures - and was lit for the first time by TV LD Iñaki Irastorza who used Robe's BMFL Spots and Pointes in his design.

The series was recorded and broadcast - on the Telecino TB channel - from the Mediaset Picasso Studios in Villaviciosa de Odón in Madrid and produced by Boomerang TV, who invited Iñaki, one of Spain's leading TV lighting specialists to add his own distinctive creative flair.

Iñaki was one of the visitors who saw the BMFL Spot for the first time at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and was impressed with the light output, so he specified it for this show.

There were three different phases

UK - Bristol's Love Saves The Day festival moved to the new, expanded location of Eastville Park this year dramatically increasing its capacity from the previous city centre site, a move that allowed 27,000 music and fans to enjoy a superlative line-up and weekend of music and entertainment graced with the blazing sunshine beneath blue skies.

Locally based lighting and visual specialist Fineline was once again at the forefront of providing some of the high production values for which this event is renowned - delivering lighting, video and rigging for the three main stages.

Fineline MD Rob Sangwell commented, "We were excited to be involved again after supplying lighting and video to the main stage last year. It's great to see the festival move forward and it was a huge pleasure collaborating with production manager Tom Paine and everyone from organisers Team Love."

Europe - German pro audio connectivity specialists DirectOut and networked audio specialists Merging, have announced high-performance interoperability of both their in-house developed RAVENNA cores.

DirectOut's MONTONE.42 supports low-latency streaming of 256 audio channels to and from Merging's Pyramix Virtual Studio DAW. This high capacity and low latency feature demonstrates the full benefit of RAVENNA. Other RAVENNA-compliant devices such as Merging's Horus and Hapi networked audio converters and DirectOut's PRODUCER.COM can simply be added to the network to provide additional features and functionality.

Merging will commence shipping of the new Pyramix 10 workstation at IBC 2015 whilst DirectOut says that MONTONE.42 is already shipping. The MADI (AES10) to Audio-over-IP bridge is based on RAVENNA audio networking technology and offers four MADI and two gigabit network por

UK - With LED lighting now becoming more and more common, LEE Filters has introduced Zircon - a new range of lighting filters that is designed to offer quality, consistency and, above all, durability.

It's no secret that conventional lighting filter struggles with fade times when used in conjunction with LED lighting set-ups. Zircon filters are able to circumvent this problem, thanks to a new technology that gives them an increased lifespan of up to 200 times longer than standard lighting filters.

It's not only their fade-resistant characteristics that distinguish Zircon filters from their more conventional counterparts. They are also easy to handle and fix in place, thanks to being produced on a 180-micron substrate that is more than double the thickness of standard filters.

With a selection of warming and diffusion filters in the range, Zircon filters provide a reliable an

Canada - A KV2 Audio ESR215 system was used at the recent AES Conference on Sound Reinforcement held at McGill University in Montreal.

Just two ESR215's were used for the event providing crystal clear reproduction of the speeches and discussions at McGills Theatre facility.

Prior to the closing ceremonies a concert was held with a band of local jazz musicians and mixed by the legendary George Massenburg who is a Professor at the Music Research Division of McGill University. George commented, "We simply don't realise what we are missing until we hear a system of this quality."

Six ESM26 stage monitors driven by ESP2000 amplifiers were used on for foldback by the band.

Numerous other accolades were received for the systems clarity throughout the conference. "This is the best sound we have had at an AES Conference in the last 25 years," said Peter Mapp, AE

USA - The popular Beachbody health and fitness brand held its most important coach event of the year 16-19 July in Nashville and Elation gear was there in force on what is, perhaps surprisingly, production company Visions Lighting's biggest job of the year.

"For us it's bigger than EDC, Coachella or any of the other festivals we do throughout the year," states Todd Roberts, president of Southern California-based Visions Lighting, who has been involved with Team Beachbody Coach Summit since its inception. "It started in a small ballroom and has grown every year. Last year there were 8,000 attendees and this year there were 20,000 so it's growing exponentially."

Beachbody markets some of the U.S.'s most popular health and fitness solutions including DVDs and health and fitness products with a well-known presence across print and digital media. Team Beachbody

UK - Produced by Gods and Monsters Theatre, London's Free Open Air Theatre Season presents a free, action-packed programme that aims to introduce new audiences - irrespective of age, education, financial circumstances, physical ability or ethnicity - to theatre.

Running since 2003, the season has simply grown each year and is once again taking place in Central London's The Scoop from 5-30 August. Having worked closely with Gods and Monsters Theatre on previous projects, White Light is not only providing the lighting equipment but also sponsoring the occasion; helping to make theatre accessible to a whole new generation of theatre-goers.

Gods and Monsters Theatre is an organisation dedicated to producing shows that share the myths and legends of the recent and distant past and bring these to a modern-day audience. It is the only company that hosts a free season of classical the

South Africa - No fewer than 26 community theatre groups will strut their stuff at this year's Hello Community Theatre Arts Festival.

The Festival was launched last year by TUT's Department of Entertainment Technology, in partnership with the City of Tshwane and DWR Distribution, to expand the boundaries of theatre by interacting with local and emerging artists. The festival is a community theatre development programme where students of the Department and community theatre groups exchange knowledge and skills.

Interactive sessions, workshops and masterclasses will be held in Mamelodi's Beer Hall and at the Breytenbach Theatre in Sunnyside. The festival will open in the Mamelodi West Community Hall (19 - 22 August) with a final run at the Breytenbach Theatre (26 - 29 August). It will showcase a variety of interactive art installations and performances from participating communi

Finland - On 10 September 2015, during the Helsinki Design Week, the Silo 468 light art structure will house a gathering of minds from the world of architecture, design and lighting. Thinkers at world class level will join Lighting Design Collective (LDC) in challenging and debating the current role of light, natural, artificial, digital, responsive and participatory in the architecture and in built environment.

The social, cultural and design role of lighting is facing major crossroads and departure points at this moment in history, from applicative history to digital futures. For example, the importance of natural and artificial light to the quality of life and the health of individuals are gaining recognition worldwide, reverting priorities that seemed to be consolidated for more than a century. At this stage, the evolution towards the next generation of artificial light and

South Africa - The main stage for the 2015 Innibos arts festival - one of the largest Afrikaans events in South Africa drawing over 107,000 people over five days - staged at Hoërskool Bergvlam in Nelspruit, was lit for the eighth year by Pretoria, based LD Johan Ferriera. This year he chose to work with nearly 150 Robe moving lights, supplied to the event by Johannesburg based MGG, one of the country's leading technical production specialists.

Johan was also responsible for the set and visuals design, which allowed him to deliver a coherent and harmonious 'bigger picture' designed for a diversity of artists appearing over the four days - typically with 15 - 20 acts onstage per day - plus a large gospel show on the Sunday.

He worked alongside the festival's creative team, with the starting point for the stage lighting design being the biggest night of the festival - Saturday.<

Thailand - As well as its beaches, Patong resort on Phuket (Thailand's largest island), is also famous for its bustling nightlife, with hundreds of restaurants and venues of all types.

One of the most recent additions is the Illuzion Nightclub, a new-build venue offering the South East Asian market a combination of interactive Las Vegas-style shows and a disco with four resident DJs and international guest jocks.

The venue features two huge balconies running round the dancefloor, three VIP areas, a VIP room and six bars.

To meet the requirements of the club's varied entertainment formats, the management required a top grade flexible audio system and selected products by Italian manufacturer Outline throughout.

Voghera-based installer Skeldon puts its team's wide experience in various entertainment fields at the disposal of clients worldwide and worked on the Illuzion proje

Australia - Market-leading manufacturer Avid turned heads at the ProLight+Sound exhibition in Frankfurt in April with the release of their new flagship live audio mixing console, the S6L.

At the head of the pack in Australia, Novatech Creative Event Technology have now announced their investment in the S6L platform. For their first order, Novatech

have chosen the largest and most powerful of the two sizes available; an S6L-32D control surface, E6L-192 processing engine and Stage64 I/O rack expanded with additional AES/EBU I/O.

This combination will provide engineers with 192 mix channels to mix into 96 busses, plus Left/Centre/Right, two monitor busses and a 24x24 matrix. The E6L-192 processing engine will allow engineers to shape their sound with up to 200 plug-ins running at 96 kHz. The control surface provides intuitive and extensive control via 32+2 faders and four 12&qu

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