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Area 4 - Banner - Sept 2025

Business

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USA - Last Friday night saw the United Nation's Headquarters in New York become home to the world premiere of David Guetta's One Voice video as it was projected live onto the building's facade as part of the UN's '#THEWORLDNEEDSMORE' campaign.

Lead agency Mission Media called in projection mapping and video consultants Bluman Associates to turn its concept into reality, transforming the 509ft building for special guests including secretary general of the United Nations Ban-Ki Moon and David Guetta.

Guetta's One Voice video was filmed especially for the groundbreaking cause marketing campaign which aims to turn people's words into real support for communities affected by humanitarian crises.

International brands have sponsored words they believe the world could use more of - such as inclusion, love and education - and every time someone tweets the word and the h

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France - Cadac held a second European live sound industry presentation this month, in association with its French distributor Audio2. The event was hosted by leading sound, lighting, video and rigging events rental specialist Dushow at its Nice HQ, and was held in conjunction with DPA microphones and Meyer Sound.

The one day event was attended by numerous hire companies, sound designers and engineers from across France and Spain; where Dushow has operational centres in Paris, Marseille and Barcelona, in addition to it facility in Nice.

Commenting on the event, Cadac brand development manager Richard Ferriday says, "Following the success of our first presentation event with Outline in Italy, we are embarking on a series of 'roadshows' across the continent, in order to demonstrate the operational and audio superiority of our new product range - particularly the CDC eight an

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The Netherlands - Advantech has signed an agreement with Avnet Technology Solutions. The partnership is formed specifically for the Pro AV market in Europe. Avnet Technology Solutions is a global IT solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc.

As a global IT distributor, Avnet provides a variety of services designed to assist partners in bringing end-to-end digital signage solutions to the market quickly and cost-effectively. Bas Smeets, business development manager at Advantech explains the motives of partnering with Avnet: "With the tremendous growth in demand for professional digital signage and retail/hospitality solutions in Europe, Avnet's comprehensive experience and large customer base will help Advantech expand its business in this area."

Advantech provides an extensive range of reliable and innovative products that will help to com

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Italy - Lighting designers Stefano Limone and Gianfranco Saponaro included 12 Robe Robin Pointes and eight LEDWash 600s in their scheme at the Teatro Franco Parenti, one of the larger venues at the new Elita Ouverture Festival, a celebration of EDM and electronic arts staged at various venues in Milan, Italy.

The lighting for the duration of the festival was looked after at the venue by Walter Lutzu, who has also been a keen Robe user for some time and loves the new Pointe multi-purpose fixtures in particular. He says: "It's a great product, lightweight and compact, with a host of features that make it highly versatile."

With Elita being an EDM festival, there was a need for lots of backlighting and filling the stage space with lights.

Six of the Pointes were positioned on the floor behind the DJ booth. For De La Soul's performance, these were re-positioned to be b

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UK - London-based Eclipse Services' new advanced videoconferencing solution saved the day at a recent conference for multinational engineering and project management consultancy AMEC - when at the last minute their keynote speaker was told by his doctors not to fly.

Ottawa, Canada based global bio-energy products industry expert Don G Roberts, was due to address the conference staged at Stationers' Hall (full name The Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper Makers) in central London, when with less than 24 hours' notice before his scheduled departure, he received the medical advice.

Eclipse, which manages all the venue's 'in-house' AV and technical requirements, thought quickly and stepped in with their new videoconferencing service as the solution.

The Eclipse team supported Roberts and created the means to enable him to be linked from a laptop at his home in Ottawa to

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UK - Virgin Records celebrated its 40th anniversary with an extraordinary 10-day exhibition at London's Studio B1 recently. The event was designed to showcase the talent spawned by Virgin Records over the past four decades.

Capital Sound was on hand to make sure the company that built its business on music got the audio it deserved by specifying Martin Audio's new ultra-compact and scalable MLA Mini for the first time in the main event space.

Capital's client TiRA (This is Real Art), a London based design agency, was tasked with developing a theme to showcase Virgin's 40 years of music and then roll it out across the anniversary gigs, book, exhibition and fundraiser.

Paul Timmins of Capital Sound was audio project manager, while Harm Schopman took on the role of Capital crew chief and engineer.

"The MLA Mini was amazingly effective," says Schopman. "A PA in

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China - One of the city's biggest and most exclusive clubs, Babyface remains an icon of the Beijing nightlife scene, despite fierce competition from a number of major clubs in the area. Originally opened in 2004, Babyface was completely refurbished and equipped with an APG SMX15-based sound system in 2011.

Whilst successful, owner Mr Wong decided that if he wanted to ensure his top billing amongst the young, wealthy elite of Beijing, he'd have to take things a step further. As a result, 2013 has seen another full redesign, inside and out including a new APG sound system. This time, APG distributor BVCAM, specified a Uniline D system for the main room - the first Uniline installation in China - supplemented by DX12 and DX15 delays throughout the club with bass reinforcement coming from a number of TB118s and SB115 subs. A number of separate APG systems were also specified for the

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USA - When the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York revealed its legendary holiday windows to hoards of shoppers with a performance by STREB Extreme Action Company, Unusual Rigging was on hand to ensure the event created a much talked about spectacular - and they didn't disappoint.

Having never before made a big event out of its windows unveiling, Bergdorf Goodman decided to change its demure attitude and approached STREB earlier this year with a request for a show-stopping extravaganza. This year's theme, Holidays on Ice, features display windows devoted to various annual American celebrations and STREB acrobats opened the show by dancing down the outside walls of the Fifth Avenue store, not unveiling the windows until they reached ground level.

Nate Terracio, STREB's production manager, said, "We were asked to create a showpiece that would really get eve

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Serbia - Croatian megastar Gibonni recently played a special concert in the Kombank Arena, Belgrade, Serbia in front of 20,000 fans who all went crazy for the occasion! The lighting utilized 22 x Robe Robin Pointes and 36 LEDBeam 100s which were specified by lighting designer Sven Ku?ini?.

Ku?ini?, based in Zagreb, Croatia started working with the popular singer, musician and composer this year. Ku?ini? is a well-known LD in Croatia and was offered the gig following his high profile work with Croatian rockers Prljavo Kazaliste plus a plethora of musicals, concerts and events.

Gibonni is in the middle of a tour at the moment but this was a special show and saw a much anticipated and awaited performance in Serbia.

The starting point for the Belgrade show's lighting design was to create a rig that looked as awesome as possible with as expedient amount of fixtures as possible ..

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France - Tapages & Nocturnes is renowned for the diversity and quality of its equipment range. Among the many items it stocks are a wide selection of DPA microphones, especially d:screet miniature and d:fine Headset Microphones that are particularly popular with production companies working on sports and reality TV programming.

"Our equipment is mainly designed for recording sound and it is used across a wide range of film projects and broadcast programming," says Romain Becquet, sales manager at Tapages & Nocturnes. "We own more than 1,200 wireless systems from all of the main manufacturers, and a lot of intercom systems. We also have an extensive range of DPA microphones that are in great demand because our customers find them very versatile and reliable."

The most commonly requested models are the DPA d:screet 4060 Miniature Microphone and the d:fine ran

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UK - VDC Trading Limited, the London-based company behind the Van Damme cable brand has recently been certified by Neutrik as a Certified opticalCON assembler (COCA), one of only 24 facilities world-wide and only the fourth in the UK. Thanks to VDC's investment in staff development and equipment, the company is now able to promote and deliver custom manufacture fibre optic solutions to a wide range of markets from a state-of-the-art laboratory at the Brandon Road Headquarters.

VDC CEO Niall Holden said, "This is a considerable investment but natural extension of our capability to deliver bespoke copper-based solutions. It represents a major step forward in our in-house cable technology and, as one of only four similar laboratories in the UK, will enable us to offer a vastly superior fibre optic service to our clients, but with the same great solution design and production t

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USA - The new office for Christie Lites New York is officially open for business. The warehouse is in a newly renovated 30,000sq.ft space at 13B Division Street in Fairview, NJ. This 14th location further strengthens Christie Lites' multi-office network supplying full service stage lighting equipment rentals across North America.

Said Christie Lites VP Rentals Ken Alexander, "We are proud of this new expansion which allows us to directly service our already loyal Northeast client base like never before and also provides the perfect avenue to reach new clients in the months and years to come."

Christie Lites New York has been unofficially operating for the past few months while ramping up and accumulating equipment inventory prior to any official opening announcement. Since October, the CLNY office has fulfilled several tour preps including a new NETworks Presentation

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Latvia - The Embassy of Latgale GORS is a place with a soul, where the cultural traditions of the region of Latgale combine with modern opportunities and give life to the fascinating stories of eras, people, music and art. In this place, the local dialect mixes with the sound of symphonies, and historical heritage combines with contemporary creative works. New meets old, guests encounter locals, songs hybridize with dance and art merges with cinema.

The GORS cultural centre has two concert halls, a cinema, an art school, an exhibition space, a restaurant where you can enjoy the pleasure of life, and a few rooms where dance companies and orchestras may rehearse: everything has a pulsating rhythm and is full of life.

A new building has been built in the park, on a bend in the river, near the 'United for Latvia' monument, known among the people as 'Latgales M?ra'. The purpose of

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Austria - La Bohème, composed by Giacomo Puccini, was performed for the first time in 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy. It was an immediate success and is still successful today. This was confirmed by its recent staging during the St. Margarethen Opera Festival in the Römersteinbruch (a Roman quarry). The quarry has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2001 and is the largest natural stage in Europe. For this reason, it makes an impressive setting for operatic performances.

Lighting designer and programmer Michael Grundner, event designer Ernst Hainisch and production manager Christoph Trauner (the latter two from Multisound) used 22 Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500s, along with an MA system to manage the lights.

Grundner underlined that, "The Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500s won me over with their great brightness and the way it is possible to change and sha

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UK - When experienced monitor engineer Becky Pell was asked to join Sarah Brightman on her world tour, she decided to take a creative approach to designing her stage rig.

Via Capital Sound Hire she sourced an inventory of Martin Audio's sleek LE1500 wedge monitors and W8LM Mini Line Array elements for side fills - emulating the set-up she had first seen Rod Matheson deploy, when she was teching for him on Kylie Minogue's 2008 tour. "He decided to deploy the LMs in an unusual way and it worked really well," she said.

The rationale once gain was simple. With Sarah and her four-piece band on in-ears, and with most of the inputs DI'd, she wanted to create an enveloping stage 'feel' in unobtrusive fashion, to preserve the overall look of the show.

"Sarah had previously used flown side-fills, but I've never been a fan of them for several reasons," says Pell. &q

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UK - For many years the O2 Guildhall Southampton has been a popular venue on the South Coast, hosting a wide variety of concerts and events from rock to classical, comedy and sporting, student and private parties, exhibitions, fashion shows and conferences.

Recently, Live Nation (Music) UK Limited decided that the foyer lighting needed updating as part of the venues O2 rebranding. Whilst researching potentially suitable fixtures, Simon Williams, the venue's head technician, approached local lighting experts GLS Lighting Ltd for advice. Ian Turner from GLS suggested the MilTec Batten2 as a suitable fixture, and so a demo was arranged. The result was that eight of the Batten2s have been installed along with two Par144Q led pars by the in house technical crew, along with new DMX distribution and associated cabling.

Williams commented, "The new MilTec fixtures have replaced s

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UK - The International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) has launched a Smart PAL Card (Powered Access Licence), available in different languages, which is machine-readable and can be used to ensure that only trained operators can use mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) on site. Standard PAL Cards will continue to be issued and accepted on site.

The Smart PAL Card looks the same as the standard PAL Card - the data stored on the card, such as the operator name, number and categories trained in, is also printed on it. The only difference is that the Smart PAL Card is marked by a wireless icon and has a chip embedded in it.

The data in the chip can be read by a card reader fitted to the machine. The reader can be set up to accept certain data which in turn will allow the machine to be operated. This data includes whether or not the cardholder (operator) is trained, to what lev

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Sri Lanka - When the recent Commonwealth Peoples Forum was held for the first time in Sri Lanka, Live Productions Pvt. Ltd was contracted by another local company, Dynamic AV Technologies Pvt Ltd to provide the lighting in front of 500 invited guests at the historic Galle Fort.

This comprised entirely of PR Lighting moving discharge and LED heads from their large inventory of the Chinese manufacturer's fixtures.

The lighting had to be purpose designed by the organising committee to meet the requirements of both the live audience - comprising the Secretary General Commonwealth of the Commonwealth, Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and various Ministers and Foreign delegates - as well as the television audience. As a result the fixtures first had to undergo camera tests.

Under the production management of Dhanushka Fernando of Dynamic AV large quantities of PR Solo 575

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UK - On 14 November 2013, PRG teamed with leading production company Innovision to bring the EDF Energy London Eye to life, celebrating 15 years of Red Bull Music Academy. The event celebrated club culture, bringing together over 100 DJ's and artists including Lily Allen, Katy B, Rudimental, Ritchie Hawtin, Goldie, Gilles Peterson and a whole host of other performers.

Within each capsule of the London Eye, there was an individual lighting scheme for each club brand and even the TV show Channel 4 House Party had their own pod. Altogether there were thirty clubs, 31 live streams and over one million online viewers.

PRG's account manager Andrew Strachan comments, "Lighting each of the London Eye capsules individually was a real challenge. 32 pods, 32 technicians and one rotation of the eye to get it right - and we did! As well as lighting the capsules we also transformed the

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UK - Vaughan Sound has installed hearing assist, public address, background music and audio-visual systems as part of the £4.2m revamp of the Grade II listed Penarth Pier Pavilion in South Glamorgan.

Plans to completely refurbish and upgrade the art deco-style pavilion were approved in 2011, with the 12-month project commencing last October. The pier itself first opened in 1895 and has great heritage within the coastal town of Penarth. The original pavilion was lost to fire and replaced by the current structure, which opened to the public in 1929. However, it fell into a poor state as its fortunes waned - including being hit by two large vessels in 1947 and 1966 - and it was later closed in the 1970s.

Funded by the Big Lottery Fund, Coastal Communities Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund, Welsh Assembly Government and Penarth Arts and Crafts Ltd (PALC), Vaughan Sound has played

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UK - The feelgood factor of the 2012 London Olympics may have faded, but its legacy lives on from the state-of-the-art facilities installed to host it. Key amongst these is the former International Broadcast Centre, now transformed as iCity - the home of BT Sport, where five Yamaha CL3 digital mixing consoles are helping to deliver high quality sporting action, both on television and online.

iCity is a thriving business, broadcast, data and educational centre, put firmly on the map by the launch of the BT Sport channels in the summer of 2013. Offering fans a choice of live football and other sports from around the world, chat shows and in-depth sporting reportage, the launch of BT Sport undoubtedly made other broadcasters sit up and take notice.

The technical fit out of the broadcast centre was done by leading systems integrator Megahertz Broadcast Systems, who chose five Yama

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USA - Released in April this year, the instant success of Ayrton's MagicPanel 602 has been acknowledged at the LDI show in Las Vegas where it received the 2013 LDI Award for Best Debuting Product of the Year in the Projection category.

Ayrton MagicPanel 602 is a moving head LED beam projector equipped with thirty-six 15W Osram RGBW emitters in a 6 x 6 array. Each emitter projects a tight, powerful 7.5° beam and can be controlled individually or used collectively to produce a coherent 12,000 lumen shaft of light. Under individual control, the emitters can be pixel mapped or driven by video via Art-Net or Kling-Net. To supplement the graphic possibilities this control provides, MagicPanel 602 can be continuously rotated on both pan and tilt axes, which adds a dynamic dimensional effect to beams individually projected by mapped emitters. MagicPanel is also controllable via DMX-

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USA - Lighting designer, Liam Griffiths, recently selected GLP's impression LED spots for use on tour with New Zealand alternative rock band, The Naked and Famous.

Having provided lighting dynamics for the band since 2011 the LD - who runs West Midlands-based Stage Techniques - sourced 18 X4 spots from PRG in Los Angeles, and integrated his touring floor package, consisting of six legs of curved truss, with the house rig at San Diego's House Of Blues where the world tour kicked off.

The set-up has provided the LD with an economical touring package capable of delivering a big show from a small footprint. Easy to truck and then manually transport, and without the need for big power distro, it is the kind of practical solution that is deal for shows of this scale, where the overall economics are paramount to a tour's success.

"I had only ever used [GLP's] 120RZ on my desig

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UK - Over the past few months Pearce Hire has embraced it's CSR (corporate social responsibility) and established a link with a local further education college to provide an internship programme for young people in their locality.

Peterborough Regional College runs a BTEC Extended Diploma in Music Technology. It is a two-year full-time vocational course covering all aspects of music technology and is equivalent to studying for three A-Levels. Subjects covered include live sound and production; studio recording; acoustics and audio engineering; and media, marketing and promotional skills.

The link established between Pearce Hire and Peterborough Regional College has enabled those students with an interest in the Live Events sector to go into the workplace of this busy production and hire company and learn the ropes in a bona-fide work environment.

The idea was originally moot

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