Chile - On 22 May, a new Guinness World Record was set at the Bicentenario de la Florida stadium in Santiago, Chile. A total of 2,357 footballers played a match that lasted 120 hours, beating the previous record of 105 hours set in the UK.

Organisers Entel and Huaweii appointed Real Audio Sistemas to put together a suitable closing ceremony for the occasion. At 7:00pm, 24x Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330 lit up the sky of La Florida, along with six Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500 that harmonized the lighting design. Large gobo beams set a powerful tone to this stage, all coming from the dazzling Mythos and Scenius fixtures that contributed to the scale of the event.

The backbone of the lighting performance was provided by W-DMX from Wireless Solution. Two BlackBox F-1 MKII transceivers were used, sending data from the console for more than 100m to the front truss line without disrupti

Italy - In order to give a better support to its sales network in this positive trend period for the company, DTS has announced the appointment of Antonio Parise as area sales manager.

Antonio Parise has gained an extensive sales experience working for many years in the lighting industry in the same position. He already knows many international distributors and he is well respected by all industry professionals for his integrity and reliability.

"DTS is in a positive trend due to the big success of the new products, and the reputation of our brand in the professional market is steadily growing, says Paolo Albani, sales and marketing director. "That's why we need some help to give our sales network the support they deserve. So we are really glad to welcome this passionate and motivated new colleague; Antonio is the perfect match to maintain and further boost this success."<

USA - ETC's Eos family toolkit now includes even more hands-on control for fast programming on the fly. The new Eos Motorized Fader Wings function as modular add-ons to Eos consoles or systems, allowing users to build the appropriate control desk for any live show.

The Eos Motorized Fader Wings will be released in conjunction with the Eos v2.4 software, which is geared toward the needs of programmers working in broadcast, music and live-event markets, and other complex gigs. The upcoming software update - scheduled for later this summer - expands the types of content that can be placed on playbacks and the types of controls and mapping that can be associated with them.

The Motorized Fader Wings are designed to optimise these new features, including size and rate overrides, faders that can preset to 50 percent for effect rate, and displays large enough to show the customise

UK - Colour Sound Experiment supplied lighting equipment to creative visual design specialist MIRRAD for three stages at the 2016 Barn on the Farm festival, staged in the pastoral gently rolling countryside of Over Farm just outside Gloucester.

Barn on The Farm is forging a serious reputation as a UK festival event for showcasing new and emerging talent and the brightest 'ones-to-watch' after show-stopping performances by artists like Ed Sheeran, Ben Howard, Bastille, Hozier and others all headlining past Barn on the Farm's just ahead of major career leaps.

Organisers Josh Sanger and Matt Keene have kept it intimate with 2,000 tickets and three stages; cutting edge with the lively and energised band line ups; and friendly, encapsulating the true spirit of a festival community - with the bonus of there being plenty of space to move.

MIRRAD became involved for the first

UK - In The Night Garden Live! is a live-action stage production based on the popular BBC children's television series. Taking place in a purpose-built show dome, the production brings the show and its characters to life using full-size costumes, enchanting music, magical puppets and spectacular panoramic projections, allowing its young audience to enter the magical world of the Night Garden.

The show is currently visiting various sites across the UK and, for the sixth year running, WL is providing the lighting and power equipment.

In The Night Garden Live! consists of two shows featuring stories about the main characters of Igglepiggle and Makka Pakka. Andrew Fidgeon is production electrician on the show. He comments, "In The Night Garden Live! is a unique show. Not only are there four performances a day but every show takes place in a purpose-built s

USA - A procession of over two dozen bands performed on stage at the ninth annual Purple Hatters Ball in mid-June, but this three-day festival has never really been just about the music. Set in a pastoral region of north Florida, and offering sessions in yoga, healing arts and meditation, Purple Hatters is as much about raising consciousness as it is about pleasing the ear buds.

This year's event had an appropriately expansive lightshow, thanks in part to the addition of the Rogue R1 FX-B LED fixture from Chauvet Professional.

Lighting designer John Hollingshead used 12 of the new Rogue fixtures, supplied by The Design Oasis, to create big, sweeping, transformative looks on stage that belied the relatively small size of his rig. The five independently controlled 3-watt RGB LED moving heads in each Rogue fixture, along with some extremely fast pan and tilt movements, helped

South Africa - Event lighting and set designer Joshua Cutts of Visual Frontier has applied the "extra output and great gobo work" of Clay Paky Mythos fixtures to create a dramatic, broadcast-ready design for the Miss South Africa 2016 beauty pageant.

The event was staged at Carnival City in Gauteng and showcased in a two-hour live broadcast on South Africa's M-Net and Mzansi Magic channels. Alongside the competition, a line-up of South African acts entertained the live audience and thousands of viewers at home, including MTV Africa Music Award-winning group Mi Casa.

Cutts worked alongside Centurion-based technical supplier and event production house Dream Sets to deliver the sparkling production for the second consecutive year. He positioned 16 Mythos across multiple arches which framed the main stage.

"The Mythos were used on the main arch because of their punchier ou

Europe - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) has supplied a range of ProLights LED fixtures to rental company Lite Alternative, for the European leg of Coldplay's A Head Full of Dreams stadium tour - the Brit rockers' seventh series of concerts, launched to support their seventh chart-topping studio album.

Kicking off in Nice, France, on 24 May, the tour continued throughout Europe and featured, as Coldplay's legions of fans have come to expect, only the highest production values - state-of-the-art lighting, pyrotechnics and Xylobands for the audience (wristbands featuring flashing lights that synchronise with the music).

When designing the concept for the tour, lighting designer, Paul Normandale, came back to an old challenge: "I needed an IP-rated wash fixture - as well as a blinder - that would be reliable and crew friendly," explains Paul. "Often in stadium situati

France - More than 15,000 delegates from 94 countries descended upon the French Riviera recently for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a celebration of innovation across the multiple industries that featured speakers such as Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, and movie director Martin Campbell. Lending an appropriately uplifting visual backdrop to the proceeds was a vibrant lighting display from BigFish SRL Ltd. that featured a collection of fixtures from Chauvet Professional.

BigFish specified 18 Ovation E-910FC colour rendering RGBA-Lime fixtures for the event's three stages (Lions Innovations, Lions Health and Lions education) that hosted speakers, demonstrations and panel discussions. The company also hung 24 Nexus 4x4 COB LED panels above the audience and the conference's exhibition area. The Nexus units were used as house lights as well as creati

World - Justin Bieber is enjoying the commercial success of his fourth studio album, Purpose, the campaign for which currently includes an extensive world tour.

Lighting for the tour has been designed by Cory FitzGerald with the rig including Robe Pointes plus two BMFL Spots which are being utilized as rear follow spots.

It's Cory's first work for Bieber. When he came on-board, the production design created by production manager Chris Gratton and creative director Nick DeMoura was already evolving, together with video content produced by Michael Figge of Possible.

Fifty-six Robe Pointes are rigged on the upstage trusses and under the downstage flying catwalks, which are used for many scenes and effects, primarily as the high-powered beam lights for which they are renowned.

"They are great fixtures," he states, "fast, punchy and with lots of tools under the h

Belgium - Barco has announced the departure of its chief financial officer, Carl Peeters, who has decided to pursue a new professional opportunity. Ann Desender, currently vice president finance & control will succeed Carl as CFO for Barco. This change will become effective as of September 2016.

Ann Desender joined Barco in 2008 and has been leading Barco's global finance team since 2010. She will succeed Carl Peeters as a member of Barco's Core Leadership Team and will report directly to the CEO.

Carl Peeters joined Barco in 1987. His initial roles were in business development. He took up his first senior finance role as CFO of BarcoNet in 2000. He was appointed group CFO of Barco NV in 2010.

Eric Van Zele, CEO of Barco and Jan De Witte, CEO designate, commented, "Carl has been a long term senior manager with Barco and throughout his career has played an important rol

UK - British laser and special effects company AC Lasers has upgraded its line of smoke and haze machines to feature integrated W-DMX control.

Nano-RX modules have been installed into Look Solutions Viper 2.6 smoke machines and Pea Soup Phantom hazers to provide full wireless control of the output and variable blower control.

Andy Thompson, of AC Lasers notes: "It is important to have full, balanced coverage of haze in arenas or outdoor festival stages for lasers to look their best, and W-DMX

Europe - Ayrton has launched DreamSpot-18k, billed as the world's first laser-source automated profile.

Fitted with an Osram Laser Phaser P6000 phosphor conversion module, DreamSpot-18K is capable of both beam and spot projection and offers an 18,000 lumen output, in a uniform beam with no hot spots, plus continuous pan and tilt capability.

DreamSpot-18K's zoom is composed of a 13-element optical system that provides a range of 2° to 34° in Beam mode and 6° to 54° in Spot mode. The monochrome laser emitter is colour calibrated at 5,600°K, negating the need for relamping due to colour variations.

DreamSpot-18K offers a CMY subtractive colour mixing system and a wheel of 13 standard colours that include four levels of CTO correction. It is capable of producing an almost infinite palette of pastel and saturated colours, says the company.

Its flicke

Germany - When award-winning German pop and R&B singer, Sarah Connor, started gearing up last Autumn for her Muttersprache tour in the DACH countries, experienced LD and production designer, Bertil Mark, was entrusted with lighting design duties.

"We first played a theatre tour and really liked the intimate feel," he said. "So when we moved up to arenas this year I tried to 'resize' the show to maintain an intimate setting for her and her band."

Helping him achieve this was a combination of GLP's X4 (Tunable White) LED fixtures and 32 of the new X4 Bar 20 battens. With the Muttersprache album having gone platinum, the shows were performed entirely live, with no computer based backing tracks. Thus Bertil decided to create a visually slow moving vibe to pick out the music accents, with a combination video/lighting set where the video walls acted more as a scenic digit

Australia - After a short hiatus, Australia's most popular all-night dance music festival, Midnight Mafia, was back with a bang this year at the Showground event space in Sydney's Olympic Park, hosting some of Australia's most popular DJs including The Enforcers and The Ace of Spades.

With the Midnight Mafia organisers promising to deliver "the biggest event to date", the pressure was certainly on LD Arian Yegenah to come up with an entertaining visual concept to delight the expectant 7,000 partygoers. To award the 5,400sq.m space with an added visual dimension, Chamelion touring systems Australia acquired 14 x Chauvet Professional Vesuvio RGBA fixtures from Australian distributor Showtools to provide Yegenah with illuminated fog effects to fill the impressive event space.

Yegenah placed two Vesuvio RGBA fixtures on each of the seven moving truss arms suspended from the ra

The Netherlands - Marco Hartendorf, technical manager of Haarlemhe Philharmonie, the Netherlands, and his crew have taken delivery of their first Robe moving - 10 new DL4X Spots.

Silence and the LED lightsource were both keys when it came to deciding which luminaires to invest in for this latest purchase, and although competitor products had been used in their concert and recital venues before, they were too noisy for this type of performance explained Marco.

He and the lighting team of four work across the Philharmonie concert hall in Haarlemhe Philharmonie's two main venues - De Kleine Zaal capacity 412 and The Great Hall, with 1220 sets, and also the Stadschouwburg (City Hall) which is about 2k away, still in the city centre.

What is now the Philharmonie re-opened in 2005 after extensive renovations incorporating the original building and its performance spaces dati

UK - Opening in 1997, Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan Playhouse in London which housed all of Shakespeare's original works. Today, the theatre is dedicated to exploring Shakespeare's work through both performance and education.

Similar to the original productions, daytime performances within the venue have always used natural daylight, whilst evening shows use a broad wash of tungsten floodlighting. Now, for the first time ever, the venue is installing a theatrical lighting rig and has approached WL to provide the equipment.

The rig has been installed as part of Emma Rice's first season as artistic director. The lighting designer is Malcolm Rippeth, who is also lighting two of the shows in the opening season.

He comments, "The Globe has always been a space for experimentation which is reflected by the introduction of theatri

France - InfoSport+, a themed TV channel offered by the Canal+ Group, France's leading pay-TV Group, recently installed 50 neutral white LED Robert Juliat Tibo profiles in its brand new broadcasting studio where they are in daily use on sports live news broadcasts.

Due to the re-orientation of the InfoSport+ editorial line, a new studio was created by French designer, Philippe Désert, which led to new lighting requirements. Engineering project manager, Jean-Marc Delage, decided on Robert Juliat Tibo neutral white LED profiles, on the advice of French lighting director, Frédéric Dorieux.

This is not the first time Robert Juliat Tibo LED profiles have been favoured by Canal+. The same model was installed in 2013 at the InfoSport+ studio, at that time with a white body colour to blend with the studio's white feature ceiling. Successful comparative tests w

Italy - Delegate registration for the tenth lighting quadrennial, Showlight 2017, is now open. The eagerly-awaited event takes place in Florence, Italy at the Palazzo dei Congressi from 20-23 May 2017 and welcomes Clay Paky as its main sponsor.

Tickets will sell out fast, so secure a place now by visiting the Showlight website. The 'register' link will direct you straight to Showlight's registration page on the Eventbrite website where you can choose your tickets. Delegates have a choice of two ticket options: Full Delegate or Papers Session Only Delegate.

Full Delegate ticket holders enjoy the whole event which, in addition to the Papers sessions, includes the Saturday evening reception, the Sunday evening company-sponsored dinners, Monday afternoon visits to places of cultural interest, and the main Showlight Gala Dinner.

Altern

FanFair Alliance - Artists including Arctic Monkeys, Iron Maiden, Ed Sheeran, Noel Gallagher and Little Mix have launched a new campaign against ticket touts. Dubbed the FanFair Alliance, it is calling on the government to take tougher action against websites which resell concert tickets. Launching the campaign, Arctic Monkeys' manager Ian McAndrew accused the sites of "rampant profiteering". He said the goal was to "make it easier for fans to buy tickets" at face value. "Fans' anger, their discontent, is what prompted me to do something about this," he told the BBC. "I hope the efforts of this campaign will put pressure on the government to do something."

The secondary ticketing market in the UK is thought to be worth more than £1bn a year. But the music industry is concerned that fans are being excluded from concerts by "professional" resellers, who scoop up tickets as

UK - The first products in Elation Professional's new DTW Series of variable white LED lights are now available. DTW Series fixtures are colour temperature adjustable and can emulate the 'Dim to Warm' look of conventional tungsten / halogen fixtures.

Optimized to give the finest in variable white light, available now are the DTW Par 300, DTW Par Z19 IP and DTW Bar 1000. All three fixtures feature full colour temperature range control from 2,700K - 6,500K plus independent Dim-to-Warm channel control from 1,800K -to 3,200K for accurate rendition of traditional tungsten halogen lamps. All DTW Series fixtures include extremely smooth dimming with variable dimming curve modes, strobe and chase effects included.

The DTW PAR 300 houses (16) 10W multi-chip CW / WW / Amber LEDs for a soft light that is easily adjustable from warm white tungsten to cool white. Beam angle is 23°

UK - Utopium lit up Grillstock Festival as it returned to Bristol Harbourside for a weekend of meat, music and mayhem, 2-3 July 2016.

This year's Grillstock Festival boasted performances from The Fratellis, The Stranglers and the Cuban Brothers as it welcomed over 14,000 BBQ-lovers to the two-day event. Complete with a King of the Grill barbeque showdown, two music stages and endless food vendors, Utopium was tasked with creating appropriate stage sets and lighting for the festival areas.

For the bar lighting, site lighting and stage lighting, Utopium supplied 20 Chauvet Q-Wash 419Z LEDs, 12 Martin MAC Quantum Profiles, 11 Chauvet Rogue RH1 Hybrids, 18 Chauvet Nexus 4 x 4 panels, nine 4 lite Molefays, six Selecon Arena 2Ks and 12 of Utopium's new SGM Q-7s. All lighting was controlled by an Avolites Arena controller. Utopium also supplied Antari HZ-500s to add extra ambienc

USA - New technologies that excel under controlled test conditions in a laboratory don't always meet expectations in real life. Every engineer knows that; so too do lighting designers. This thought passed briefly through the mind of Jonathan Lipsy recently when he completed a video production studio project at New York's D&C Digital, formerly the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

Lipsy, the manager of broadcast & lighting at Integrated Solutions Group, had specified the new Ovation E-910FC RGBA-Lime colour-mixing fixture from Chauvet Professional for the studio's lighting system. Having tested the fixture extensively, he was impressed with how its lime LEDs enhanced its colour-rendering capabilities. Still, since the technology was new, he had no experience using it in the field.

"All the pre-testing I did with the Ovation E-910FC showed me that it was going to work on this

Canada - Les Feluettes (Lilies) made its world premiere at the Opera de Montreal recently playing to full houses during its four-night run. Lighting designer Martin Labrecque utilized seven Clay Paky Scenius Spots for the new production.

Les Feluettes, with a book by Michel Marc Bouchard and music by Kevin March, is a play within a play. It begins as a prison confessional and unfolds as a love story spanning 1912-1957, a time when same-gender relationships were conducted largely in secret.

The opera marked Labrecque's first use of Scenius Spots. He frequently deploys other Clay Paky fixtures using them on Cirque du Soleil productions and the Pan American Games' opening ceremonies last summer.

For Les Feluettes, Labrecque lit eight tableaux showing different locations and time periods in monochromatic palettes of amber or blue. The orchestra

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