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Lighting

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Denmark - Martin Professional has announced the immediate pre-order availability of their new M-DMX interface hardware for connecting lighting software and DMX universes as well as several new controller solution bundles, including the M-PC 2U bundle and the LightJockey 2 and M-PC+ Controller kit.

The Martin M-DMX is a rugged aluminium extruded device and is built with two XLR 5-pin DMX ports, a USB 2.0 connection and a K-lock slot for securing the device. The interface also features a new stackable design, LED indicators and isolated dual output. The M-DMX is compatible with Martin's LightJockey and M-PC software, M-Series Consoles, Fixture Upload software, and is backwards compatible with Martin's Duo-DMX interface.

Martin's M-PC 2U is a professional two-DMX universe package, bundling Martin's M-PC software and the newly designed M-DMX two-port DMX interface. As the latest e

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UK - Lighting / visuals designer Jvan Morandi is enjoying his first tour with the UK indie rockers The Kooks, who have just kicked off a UK and European tour, with lighting, LED screens and several custom elements supplied by west London rental specialist, Colour Sound Experiment.

Jvan is not afraid of taking a creative risk or two, and the design involves a provocative synergy of lighting and video delivered with Jvan's trademark thought and intelligence. The set embraces a whole range of styles characterized by The Kooks own distinctive style, and for every number, Jvan's imagineering brings an individual look, theme or ambience.

It's also Jvan's first full tour with Colour Sound as a supplier, on which he comments, "I like working with this company. It's a very well-organized operation with excellent kit, everyone is friendly and highly knowledgeable - and generally th

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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UK - The latest in the successful series of PLASA Focus events will take place at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow on 2-3 December 2014.

Aimed at bringing together audio and lighting experts working in the live events sector at a regional level, the show is a chance to meet representatives from industry leading companies to seek out the latest products and services - as well as a premier networking opportunity.

Event Director, James Ashwood, comments: "There's a strong selection of lighting and audio companies at the Glasgow show including Robe, Avolites, Ambersphere, White Light, Black Light, Chauvet and Sennheiser, along with key dealers such as TMB, LMC, Warehouse Sound, Apex acoustics, HDPro, FBT and Polar Audio and rigging, trussing and special effects companies. Add to that the free to attend two-day seminar program and the rigging conference -

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UK - Using more lights than ever before STL created a light show with a punch at this year's Leeds Castle Fireworks display. Dubbed one of the South East's largest fireworks displays outside London, the Leeds Castle event in Kent, with synchronised lighting and fireworks to music, has become a draw for thousands of spectators each year and 2014 was better than ever.

Based on the outskirts of Maidstone in Kent, STL has designed and installed lighting at the Leeds Castle Fireworks display for five consecutive years. The company's ability to create a dramatic light show to music that compliments fireworks has become widely recognised, hence STL regularly works with pyrotechnic experts, Alchemy, who develop the theme for the annual Leeds Castle event.

Despite the essential maintenance work taking place on the exterior of the ancient building, which requires a permanent scaffold an

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USA - Lightwave International has announced a laser­based lighting fixture called Phenom to be released at LDI 2014 in Las Vegas this week.

The Phenom combines traditional lighting features with lasers' crisply­defined effects and vivid colours. The Phenom also boasts intrinsic audience­scanning safety, DMX control, an integrated media server, full­colour laser output, and a speedy moving head.

Intrinsic audience scanning safeguards are permanently calibrated by Lightwave International to ensure Phenoms are always audience safe at a minimum distance of 9.1m. No operator, hardware, or software error can defeat the intrinsic safety design once rigged. Any Phenom rigged 9.1m or more from the audience will always perform under the FDA CDRH regulated maximum permissible exposure.

The Phenom is the first moving head laser to implement intrinsic audience scanning safety, making

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USA - Life Nightclub at the SLS Hotel and Casino on the north end of the Strip is Las Vegas's newest chic night spot and the latest nightclub to feature an Elation lighting package following this year's opening of Drai's Beach Club & Nightclub and the lighting upgrade at Marquee Nightclub.

SLS opened in August as the Strip's first major hotel-casino unveiling in four years. Located on the site of the legendary Rat-Pack era Sahara Hotel, Life is a multi-tiered club with a stadium style theatre design and 60ft-high ceiling. There is a good reason for that as the club occupies what used to be the Sahara Theatre and retains some of its original structure. Transformation from the legendary Sahara means the space includes special features like a catwalk system and theatrical rigging points for aerialists to perform.

Steve Lieberman and SJ Lighting have again delivered a first-class

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UK - Taking its first steps into building a lighting inventory alongside its extensive stocks of sound and video equipment, Manchester-based Keyteq - which has over 24 years of experience in the live events industry - has made its first investment into lighting count, opting for a selection of intelligent moving heads from Chauvet Professional.

The company selected eight Chauvet Professional Rogue R2 Spot lights, eight Chauvet Professional Legend 412Z heads, COLORado 2-Quad Zoom Tour fixtures, and six each of Rogue R1 Beam units and Q-Wash 560Z-LED light heads.

Keyteq also chose to invest in TRUSST, backed by Chauvet, taking over 60m in various sizes with accessories and corners to enable a multitude of combinations - ensuring creativity and greater design freedom to offer to all clients.

Ian Chandler, director at Keyteq, explains, "We've steered away from lighting inve

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Richard Martin Lighting (RML) continued its support for Children In Need by providing lights for the Glasgow show, filmed in the BBC Studios at Pacific Quays.

Says RML, With all of the changes to studios in London, over the past few years we have done more and more work in Manchester and Glasgow and now our brand is a recognisable one there, which is a great achievement!

"To ensure that we at RML can provide the type of service that our customers can and should expect, we work with local company Teknique Systems Ltd (TSL), who oversee our projects in Scotland. Tony Kennedy and his team have a great rapport with customers and know the crew and studios like the back of their hand, making them an obvious choice to work with."

Roger Williams designed the lighting show, which was formed of Robin LED 600 Wash, MAC 500, MAC Auras, Sunstrips, a Followspot and 50 LC2140 panels.

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Denmark - Celebrating its 10th season anniversary, The Royal Danish Opera House has decided to add an extra dimension to the beauty of the modern building designed by architect Henning Larsen.

Lighting designer and technical manager from the Royal Danish Theatre, Tommy Larsen, is responsible for lighting, sound and video. "We wanted to create a hype around the Opera House and put focus on this amazing building, which is visible throughout central Copenhagen and the Dockland," he explains.

But this vision was far from straightforward. Immediate challenges encompass the front of the structure, which is a glass façade with steel bars; then there is the great distance, the task of illuminating the water in front of the building through the light output (or its reflection) ... all the while ensuring the minimum of inconvenience for the audience seated in the foyer area.

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Australia - In order to entice tenants to the Melbourne's new Eastland Shopping Centre, a cocktail party was held with a Yarra Valley produce theme. Three truck-loads of trees were shipped in to construct a lush forest.

"It seemed that every time we put some lights up, half an hour later they were encased in branches so it wasn't so much a matter of focusing more a matter of pruning," commented lighting designer for the event Richard Grenfell.

Richard wanted a look of dappled light coming through the trees but how to rig a fixture that delivers a fat and wide-angle beam with only a four metre trim in the venue, was a problem. The only fixture that could do this was the Clay Paky B-EYE which Richard used in a static mode.

"If you take the B-EYEs out of their disco / kaleidoscope mode into a nice fat breakup beam and then use the inbuilt effects to very slowly p

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World - An impressive array of Clay Paky moving heads are currently at the core of the lighting for Cirque Du Soleil's latest touring show Dralion, designed by award-winning Canadian LD Luc Lafortune.

Lafortune worked alongside show director Josh Mowczko to specify numerous Clay Paky fixtures, including the Alpha Wash 700, Alpha Wash Halo 1200, Alpha Wash 1200, Alpha Spot HPE 1200, Alpha Profile 1200 and Alpha Spot HPE 1500, with the fixtures delivering a range of beautifully absorbing textures, reliability and ultimate flexibility.

"This show was probably one of the first ever Cirque du Soleil productions with a specific storyline, which became the catalyst for many of the subsequent design choices," explains Lafortune. "The four main characters represent the four elements, which are reflected through colour so it originally made sense for the lighting t

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UK / USA - PLASA's month-long elections to determine positions on its European and North American Regional Boards, together with its central Governing Body, concluded at midnight on Wednesday 19 November. Companies and individuals from PLASA's worldwide membership voted in the elections, which were conducted via a secure online poll.

There were four positions available on the European Regional Board. Ed Pagett of Panalux was elected for a second term as Chairman, Peter James of Shure Distribution as representative to PLASA's Distributor members and Malcolm Burlow of Highlite was voted as the Dealer/Retailer representative. Robert Kronman joins the Board as the new Individual representative.

Four positions were also up for election on the North American Regional Board with Todd Spencer of PSAV elected as Vice-Chairman, Tracey Cosgrove of Rosco Laboratories as Secretary, Orestes

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UK - The London-based design studio Immersive had a hand in creating Christmas joy this year. They 'switched on' the Christmas lights for the northern town of Wigan in a rather extraordinary way. The stunt involved some 500sq.m of panels holding more than 8m LED lights plus loads of Christmas decorations. The show was filmed for the Tesco Christmas advert, which went viral on social media soon after first airing.

The advert debuted during the season finale of Downton Abbey. Thousands of viewers across Britain saw it marking the end of a weekend of television packed with the Christmas adverts from major retailers, including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Argos and Asda.

The Christmas advert is the most talked about commercial advert in the UK. John Munro, CEO of Immersive, comments: "During a visit to the US, I experienced the whirlwind around Super Bowl adverts . . .

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UK - The red carpet moments at the MTV EMA Awards have grown into an occasion in their own right, demanding the kind of production values usually discovered once inside the show itself. This year's event at Glasgow took the red carpet celebrations to yet another level.

Lighting specialists for the film, television and entertainment sectors, Panalux, chose to invest in the new Magic Blades from Ayrton especially for this event. Panalux gaffer for the MTV event was Mark Gardiner who explains why: "I was first made aware of the Magic Blades when I was sent a web-link to a stunningly programmed video clip of them in action on the Ayrton web site...the effects were fantastic, very original. I then saw them a few days later exhibited at PLASA London and wasn't disappointed so we placed an order."

For lighting designer, Stuart Pring, this was his first encounter with the Bl

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USA - At LDI in Las Vegas, Martin Professional introduced the MAC Aura XB wash light, M-Touch lighting console, and RUSH Gobo Projector 1.

"It's an exciting time for us with so many products launched recently and so many new to be launched today at LDI in Las Vegas," said Peter Skytte, head of product management, Martin Professional. "We're bringing a variety of new products to the market across our entire product range, including controllers, atmospheric effects, LED video, lighting and Rush by Martin."

Incorporating many new features first introduced in Martin's MAC Quantum Wash, the MAC Aura XB combines a compact design and low weight with a new colour mixing system and an optimized lens design for tighter beams and more even washes The Aura XB uses a super bright, single lens wash with fully premixed colour to provide beautiful and robust colour washes.

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North America - The recent partnership with industry expert Paul Rabinovitz has resulted in another strong alliance for Parasol Systems, this one with long time industry leader High End Systems.

At LDI, High End Systems showcased its latest developments with an eye-catching 40ft by 40ft booth. The STAR600 system was hung dead centre of their set-up and loaded with six Shapeshifter C2 and four SolaSpot Pro 1500 luminaries.

Shapeshifters C2's and SolaSpot Pro 1500 are the newest additions to the innovative range of luminaires designed by Richard Belliveau. Each offers "awesome power, incredible speed, and total flexibility". Each Shapeshifter has seven independently controlled modules housed in one moving fixture which basically means that these luminaires will provide a jaw-dropping visual impact to audiences everywhere. The SolaSpot Pro 1500 offers an overwhelming cr

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USA - Royal Philips Electronics chose LDI in Las Vegas to launch the new compact lamp systems MSD Platinum 14 R and 17 RA. With today's growing trend of integrating LED walls in stage lighting design, a new generation of lamps with more powerful beams is required to cut through the sea of homogenous light they provide - and add additional accents to the show, says the company. This is exactly what the new Platinum lamp systems from Philips are designed to do. The new lamp system MSD Platinum 14 R provides extreme brightness of 12,000 lumens at 280W with a colour rendering of 80. The lamp is successfully designed-in in the X3-Coupe from Jolly.

Also, the new compact and lightweight MSD Platinum 17 RA lamps offer exceptional brightness with a light output of more than 20,000 lumens at 350W, plus cool white light (7000 K) and a high colour rendering of 85. This makes them suitable f

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USA - Nemetschek Vectorworks has announced that the Spanish-language release of its Vectorworks 2015 software version will be available on 24 November. This release is part of a worldwide rollout that included other European-language releases earlier this month and continues into 2015 with additional localizations in Japanese and Chinese. The Vectorworks line of award-winning software products includes Designer, Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Fundamentals and Renderworks.

The Vectorworks 2015 software contains more than 100 updates and new features in the areas of architecture, BIM, urban planning and entertainment design. In previous versions, the power of 64-bit was only available in the platform's photorealistic rendering engine, Renderworks, but has now been integrated throughout the entire Vectorworks 2015 product line, providing designers with the ability to handle larger

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South Africa - Having just completed the 2014 Let the Night In European Tour, South African band Prime Circle are looking forward to playing across home soil during December.

LD Vincent van Niekerk has been with the band for the past four and a half years and in July took ownership of an Avolites Tiger Touch 2.

"During my first three years I decided to work on as many different consoles as possible to learn as many as possible," explained Vincent. "But by doing that you can only imagine the complications when you arrive at a venue and you have to do a huge show off Light Jockey or DMX creator without a wing desk."

Since acquiring the Tiger Touch 2 Vincent says touring has become a breeze. "No matter what venue or what fixtures, the Tiger Touch 2 has all the personalities and all the versatility a touring desk needs. We've also started cueing all our

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Italy - Enigma is a spectacular stage-show and centrepiece at the new Cinecitta World visitor attraction in Rome - the first theme park dedicated to the rich world and history of Italian cinema - which has spawned numerous genius directors like Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Franco Zeffirelli and many more.

Lighting for the 25 minute Enigma show - produced by FilmMaster and staged in a 1200 capacity venue right in the centre of the complex - has been designed by internationally renowned LD Giovanni Pinna who specified a fully Robe moving light rig.

"'Enigma" is a highly visual show," he explains, "It's designed to illustrate the boundaries and the scope of illusion - one of the essential vehicles of filmmaking and storytelling."

It's a mixed media performance set to especially composed music featuring dancers, mapped p

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UK - For this summer's Camden Roundhouse's Reverb festival, singer-songwriter Imogen Heap curated four days of events, which culminated in a headline show from Heap herself. As per the experimental theme of the festival, 12 Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20 fixtures were pixel-mapped for one of the first times in the UK, as part of Martir's innovative show design.

Lighting and control designer Tupac Martir specified the flexible Clay Paky fixtures, which were supplied by Richard Martin Lighting, as an integral element of the set.

"The set is based on the concept of molecules, which I wanted to mirror in the lighting design through gobos," explains Martir. "When considering which fixtures I could use to give me that kind of look, the B-EYE was an easy choice."

The theme of the show evoked the forming of a human being, with the sound of a heartbeat kicking things

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USA - At LDI, ETC revealed that the Eos Titanium (Ti and Gio consoles, as well as the RPU3 (Remote Processor Unit), have become more powerful. Their motherboards have been changed, which allows currently shipping products to output up to 32,768, without co-processing. Desks with the new motherboard have three display port outputs instead of DVI ports. Any older Ti, Gio and RPU3 products (with DVI connectors) can upgrade to a total of 16,384 outputs, and both hardware variants can upgrade in 1,024, 2,048 or 4,096 increments.

"The output upgrades are now even more affordable," explains ETC Eos Controls product manager Anne Valentino. "Users needing to increase their system capacity can upgrade through a lower-cost pricing structure. Anyone wanting to expand their output can contact an ETC dealer for more information."

ETC's Nomad and Nomad Puck mini controlle

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USA - Energy levels were pumped and spirits high on the Robe Lighting booth throughout the 2014 LDI Expo in Las Vegas which saw three days of constant activity, high quality visitors and high interest in all the new products, especially the new Bright Multi-Functional Luminaire (BMFL) - shown for the first time at a US trade show.

The elegant, stylish and super-cool all-white booth was designed to maximise space and provide a showcase for the power, colour and versatility of Robe's newest technologies, together with the architectural LED product ranges of sister brand Anolis, all working together with seamless synergy.

Says Bob Schacherl, CEO of Robe Lighting Inc, "This is definitely the best LDI in Robe's history based on the responses to product presentations and the number of new customers who came specifically to see BMFL, and to express their desire to start buying a

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UK - Bolton Wanderers F.C is enjoying the benefits of a new media suite following a makeover by sponsor, SPIE. The new look was recently revealed at club manager, Neil Lennon's first press conference. As a sponsor, SPIE's branding will be visible on the backdrop of manager interviews until 2017 and bespoke ads will appear in match programmes.

The refurbishment brings the quality of Bolton Wanderer's reception and media suite up to Premiership standards; the design was planned with the potential of league promotion in mind. The club's media suite is used for all pre-and post-match media activities including manager press conferences. Following the renovation the club also intends to hold pre-game media briefings in the facility.

During the re-fit, SPIE's Facilities Services division installed a new, energy-efficient lighting scheme in order to improve illumination quality, maki

  1. Clay Paky B-EYEs shine at Lollapalooza 2014
  2. Jands Vista T2 controls Dierks Bentley's mega rig
  3. Black Light spends a Night in the Garden
  4. Black Light scores with Gleneagles refurbishment
  5. DDT on tour with grandMA2
  6. Enthusiastic response to Chauvet Professional at LDI
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