Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

Lighting

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Italy - Over 60 Clay Paky Mythos fixtures are currently lighting the famous Tree of Life sculpture for the Milan Expo 2015, in a stunning light show conceived by renowned lighting designer Koert Vermeulen of ACT Lighting Design.

Koert Vermeulen worked alongside creative director Marco Balich of Balich Worldwide Shows and architect Florian Boje from Gio Forma Architect for the project, specifying the award-winning Clay Paky fixtures from rental house Agorà. Located on the Expo site in front of the Italian Pavilion, The Tree of Life serves as a centrepiece and meeting place throughout the 6-month event, with the light show repeated twice daily to entertain visitors.

"The Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life theme of the Expo is reflected in the light show," explains Vermeulen. "It evokes the relationship between man and nature and the Mythos play a particul

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UK - Florence + the Machine's infectious enthusiasm at Glastonbury 2015 was enhanced by an elegant stage set with powerful, tasty lighting by lighting designer Rob Sinclair. To complement Florence's dramatic and eccentric music, Sinclair combined new and traditional technology in different ways to reinforce Florence's grandiose performance on the festival's celebrated Pyramid Stage.

Central to the backline were 36 ProCan Par 64s, with custom finish turned around in record time by TMB. Six rows of six ProCans, at 1000W each, could be seen by a Glastonbury audience of over 100,000 from any location at the world's largest greenfield festival.

Also across the backline a large 'kinetic wall' of mirrors, made by Jeff Wickley, was agitated to great effect by 20 DMX-controlled ProFan wind machines. Built into the stage risers was a Firefly LED festoon system with clear Filament versio

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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USA - Robe MiniMe and LEDBeam 100 fixtures are proving a perfect choice to help bring the atmosphere alive at Haven in South Beach, Miami, a trendy eatery, lounge and nightclub known for its eye-catching video wall, cool music, onyx bar and tasty mix of organic eats and exotic cocktails, all available to the in crowd until the early hours of the morning.

The lights - three MiniMes and seven LEDBeam 100s - were specified by Tom Griffin of Griffin Automation OSF and are installed in the centre of the venue. Their small size and unobtrusive design is a perfect blend with the classy high-detail style and vibe on display at Haven.

The Robe units were recommended by David Chesal, who was asked by Haven's technology director Ricardo Agudelo to provide a fresh, new, contemporary lighting scheme that offered something different and interesting for Haven customers.

"They were abs

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UK - For more than 100 years, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children's Fund has supported children whose parents work, or have worked, in the Naval Service. Initially supporting the children of ex-servicemen, the charity has grown considerably over the years, with 80% of its current beneficiaries' parents still in service. On Saturday 11 July, to celebrate its work, the charity held a fundraising day at Leadenhall Market in Central London and approached White Light to provide the production support.

Led by Clare Scherer, assistant director at the RNRMC, the day featured a dinner provided by Chamberlain's of London with guests entertained by the RMA Jazz Trio followed by a performance from All That Malarkey cabaret group. Clare comments: "We wanted to host an event which would not only raise funds for the charity but would also be highly entertaining within a unique setti

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UK - SGM's IP65-rated LED solutions featured heavily across this year's vast Glastonbury Festival site. Starting at the Pyramid Stage, a wide range of powerful washes, LED strobes and dynamic 3D effects cascaded down to a number of smaller stages where they performed long duty cycles flawlessly over the four days.

While 14 of the G-Spots, provided by HSL, graced the main stage (seven on each PA wing) elsewhere the scramble was on to secure inventory, in particular, for the popular and award-winning P-5 washlight.

Main stage lighting was supplied by Neg Earth, and with The Who headlining, their LD Tom Kenny, had nothing but positives to say about G-Spot. "I was impressed with its power, and the way it fought through everything else. I also loved the colour and they matched the other fixtures well."

Enlightened Lighting's Simon Marcus was one who drew on the P-5s to

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USA - If LA had a town square it would be Grand Park, 12 beautifully manicured acres in the middle of America's second largest city, where Angelenos gather to celebrate festivals and special occasions.

Not surprisingly, thousands of people from throughout Southern California decked for the most part in lavish red, white and blue stream into the park every Fourth of July to take in the city's largest rooftop fireworks display. This year, in addition to the pyrotechnics, a collection of 20 Next NXT-1 panels from CHAUVET Professional also tickled the eyeballs with an intensely bright and fast moving lighting display.

Kinetic Lighting of Glendale, CA positioned the moving LED panels on the truss structure at one of Grand Park's two music stages. Powered by 25 pixel-mappable RGBW LEDs, and producing razor sharp beams with an illuminance of 22,780 lux at 5 meters, the Next NXT-1 had

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UK - Calibre has launched its latest major innovation utilizing award-winning HQUltra single-channel 4K presentation switching performance technology.

The powerful HQView770 scaler-switcher utilizes in-house developed virtual-ASIC video processing technology that provides three functions in one product.

In Projection Mode, HQUltraWarp offers real-time adjustable 4K warp & blend for fast easy screen calibration.

In LED mode, HQUltra provides extremely powerful LED-optimized 4K scaling with a pixel-accurate algorithm that preserves image detail even with significant downscale, a key requirement for driving LED videowalls with good quality images.

In Presentation mode, HQUltraFast gives the user unprecedented switching speeds, changing visually instantly between input channels in 0.25 seconds. HQUltra technology promises to dramatically change current video scaling and switch

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Europe - British electronica trio Years and Years are touring summer festivals and venues with an ingenious bespoke LED strip screen mapped by an Avolites Ai Infinity EX8 server.

The concept for the LED screen was the idea of Years and Years lighting designer Chris 'Squib' Swain. It reflects the cover artwork for the band's debut album Communion, with coloured branches of LED strips intersecting at different angles from a central 'Y' shape.

Years and Years have played some of the summer's biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, BST in Hyde Park, and T in the Park.

London-based controllable LED specialists Light Initiative created the screen. It is freestanding at almost 5m high and constructed in sections of LED which makes it easy to install, dismantle, and travelwith short festival turnarounds in mind.

"Avolites' Ai Infinity EX8 can take an LTC timecode inp

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UK - The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London is now opening its spaces for any company, charity or private individual to hire. To celebrate this significant occasion, it hosted a launch event on 15 July which showcased many of the impressive spaces it has available. The gallery enlisted White Light as the sole technical supplier for the evening's production requirements.

By allowing companies the option to hire without corporate memberships, this means that the National Gallery is opening up its Central London spaces to a wider range of clients than ever before. Alicia Earls, White Light's business development manager, comments: "The National Gallery is such a historic and renowned venue so this is a really exciting development. It will see more organisations use their amazing spaces and, as a result, ensure that the events they host will be elevated by taking plac

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USA - Tom Kenny is used to designing amazing, eye-catching lightshows for high profile TV events and loves a good challenge, so making the 2015 Country Music Television (CMT Music) Awards in Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, TN, look "out of this world" really energized his creative spirit.

Tom worked in close collaboration with a creative team including production designer Anne Brahic and art director Aaron Black. He was also assisted by over 250 Robe moving lights.

With some of the most popular country music stars taking the stage for the event plus a series of sometimes unexpected collaborations, the show was kick started with a full on DJ Zedd / Lady Antebellum set.

The CMTs present a series of fan-voted awards for country music videos and television performances, broadcast live on the CMT network with voting administered via CMT's website.

This year Tom chose 93

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UK - A range of ProLights fixtures recently provided lighting for the glamorous British Racing Drivers' Club's (BRDC) annual British Grand Prix party at Silverstone racing circuit. Staged every year as part of the F1 British Grand Prix weekend, this legendary occasion attracts high-profile members and personalities from the world of motorsport.

On outdoor duties was the ProLights Solar IP65 washlight. Used to light the exterior of the buildings and marquee, it extended the ambience of the event into the outdoor spaces. With its powerful output and fantastic colour range, the Solar is perfect for bringing large outdoor spaces to life.

The Solars were really put to the test, operating throughout one of the hottest July daytime temperatures of recent times, as well as heavy overnight thunderstorms.

To welcome leading lights of the motorsport world, the ProLights Ruby beamlight

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South Africa - Robe was right at the centre of the buzz at the 2015 Mediatech Africa expo in Johannesburg last week, taking their own stand space for the first time alongside that of distributor DWR.

With over 8000 visitor pre-registrations - and a significant number of additional walk-ups over the three days, together with an increase in internationals attending the show - the biennial exhibition for entertainment technology moved up several notches. A host of leading brands, companies and industry associated academies packed the exhibition floor at the Coca Cola Dome in Northgate. This was supported with a full programme of related technical and creative seminars and presentations.

Robe's CEO Josef Valchar commented, "We have enjoyed great success in South Africa working closely with DWR, and this year, we felt it was time to further endorse the show and underline the i

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China Crisis - The cancellation of two Maroon 5 concerts in China has been linked to a band member tweeting the Dalai Lama to wish him happy birthday. The US group were due to play Shanghai and Beijing in September, but the shows were pulled last week. Promoters Live Nation did not specify a reason for the cancellations. However, a tweet by keyboard player Jesse Carmichael, which has since been deleted, has been blamed for angering Chinese authorities.

Several artists have fallen foul of authorities in Beijing for publicly supporting the Tibetan religious leader who has been exiled since 1959 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Icelandic singer Bjork was criticised after calling for Tibet's independence during a 2008 show in Shanghai while Oasis were reportedly forced to cancel shows in China after Noel Gallagher performed at a Free Tibet concert in New York. In 2011, ro

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Spain - Clay Paky's latest Mythos and A.leda BEYE K20 units, supplied by the rental company Arcoiris, gave colour and light to FC Barcelona's celebrations for their second title this year.

Camp Nou football stadium was crowded with fans to celebrate FC Barcelona's triumph in the Champions League. Nothing was left to chance to ensure an impressive event, which also commemorated the five European Cups FC Barcelona won some years ago.

The show was an explosion of light and colour. Lighting designer Ferrán Badell made extensive use of Mythos units, which stood out for their power, efficiency, perfect beams and low power consumption: just 470 W. The A.leda B-EYE K20s also provided impressive effects and colours, which were appreciated by thousands of fans at home and in the stadium.

Stonex is Clay Paky's official distributor in Spain. Thanks to its thirty-year-plus experience in

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UK - Avolites' world-class lighting and video control solutions provided an integral part of this year's Glastonbury Festival, with representation on sites including the Pyramid Stage, Other Stage, John Peel Stage, Silver Hayes and the mighty Arcadia.

An Avolites team of fifteen was on-site to liaise, support and connect with the many talented industry professionals working on the festival, further strengthening Avolites' association with the festival.

The Avolites equipment included consoles, dimmers and media servers being used across the festival site, highlighting the power, versatility and connectivity of the company's product range.

Saturday headliner Kanye West drew plenty of comment before the festival began, but after his appearance, it was the lighting that was the talk of the town for the enigmatic 'All of the Lights' rapper. Powered by 16 Avolites ART2000 dimmers

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USA/UK - ETC has introduced the Eos and Cobalt Programming Wings: two affordable, portable accessories that bring new programming power to tech tables, backstage remotes and the road.

The new ETC Eos Programming Wing provides a portable base for the programmer on the move, allowing users to travel with physical control surfaces to supplement their ETCnomad Puck or PC/Mac-based systems. The Programming Wings fit in dedicated, robust flight cases that can be easily checked as luggage. In addition to two powered USB ports, the Wings have a third, recessed port to store and secure the ETCnomad dongle.

The Programming Wings use the same programming layouts as the Gio and Cobalt 10 face panels, so users can transition to the road without altering their workflows or hunting for keys. The Programming Wings provide the travelling technician with all the comforts of home. Each wing cont

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USA - Lighting designers often like to talk about how they capture music in light, but Chris Lisle has taken this concept a step further on the Chase Rice tour. The well-known Nashville LD, who's done standout work for the likes of Miranda Lambert, One Republic and Robert Plant, wove images of music and light together in dramatic fashion for the up-and-coming country star by converting faux guitar cabinets into lighting effects, courtesy of 16 Nexus Aw 7x7 LED panels from Chauvet Professional provided by 4Wall Nashville.

Lisle positioned the Nexus Aw 7x7 panels inside eight of the replica cabinets, which were arranged on top of set carts along a row that ran across the upstage deck. When the Chauvet fixtures were off, the set props looked like standard guitar cabinets. Then, when the show kicked into high gear, the "cabinets" came alive, shooting out intense beams of w

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Austria - One of the latest additions to the Clay Paky product line, the Stormy CC strobe, proved a hit with the lighting designers as it made its debut on Austria's high-altitude music festival Snowbombing this April.

Taking place in the stunning alpine location of Mayrhofen, the festival boasts a line up of some of the world's biggest dance acts, including Fatboy Slim, Sub Focus and Rudimental.

Event production house Audile, who has had an on-going relationship with the festival since 2002, supplied 12 of the Stormy CCs to the event, alongside 40 Sharpys, 12 Alpha Spot HPE 700 and eight Alpha Beam 700 fixtures.

"The Clay Paky fixtures were ideal for Snowbombing as their flexibility, reliability and vast number of features made them extremely popular with all the lighting designers," says Audile's Director Rob Leach. "They especially liked the Stormys, as the

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UK - Aurora Lighting kept a watchful eye over for the latest series of live evictions with LD Gurdip Mahal at the Big Brother House.

Hosted at Elstree Film Studios, the live eviction shows required the full showbiz treatment with plenty of movement and razor sharp spots. Aurora were on board for the weekly events with gaffers Richard Shout and James Tinsley who loaded the set with Aurora's newly acquired Clay Paky Mythos automated heads to keep things looking lively. Moving Light Console Op, Ross Williams also had the SGM P5 Wash at his disposal for added effect.

To keep things clear on the catwalk, Aurora lined up their new Robert Juliat 'Victor' follow spots operated by Dave Scrivens and his team from Pro Spot to make sure the housemates remained in the spotlight as they made their way out of the building.

There has been plenty to watch out for during the Live Evictions. P

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France - Novelty is an industry leader in France that brings technical audio-visual solutions for the fashion, luxury, live performance, event, exhibition and TV industries. Thanks to the company's experience, Novelty works on more than 6,000 projects each year. Due to this fact, Novelty is always looking for new, reliable and efficient products.

The very first trial between Novelty and SGM was with the G-Spot. They carried out a so-called crash test, using the G-spot on the ice rink of Paris City Hall during three cold winter months.

After this period, Jérôme Gasselin, technical director of Novelty, said, "Okay, the new SGM products are serious. Let's test the entire range."

With its IP65-rating, wireless connection, design and of course light output, the P-5 brings Novelty the tools they need to cover what they do best, which covers agency events, fashion

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UK - In a major investment programme, event technology specialist Blitz|GES has significantly expanded the capacity and capabilities of its lighting department. The investment programme was executed in instalments, with the most recent consignments arriving in July 2015.

With the appointment of a lighting project manager late last year, and progressively larger capital investments in equipment, software and control systems, the Blitz|GES lighting department has expanded quickly with a programme of continuous investment in the most versatile and reliable lighting technology on the market, Blitz|GES now has the requisite resources to deliver a full spectrum of show and event lighting.

This latest consignment consisted of control equipment including Jands Vista S3 and S1, and High End Hedgehog 4 consoles. This advanced equipment is essential to Blitz|GES' ability to deliver high

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USA - In a lakeside New Jersey community, Pompton Lakes High School prides itself in providing opportunities to meet the needs of a diverse student population. With an award-winning fine arts programme, the high school recently underwent a renovation to upgrade its performing arts space. To guide them during the project, Nelson Enterprises was brought on board as the systems integrator and to control the new lighting system they chose the NEO lighting control console from Philips Strand Lighting.

"In the beginning we were actually provided a sales lead from another company that brought us onto the project to complete the installation of the new lighting system at Pompton Lakes High School," began Bill Nelson, Nelson Enterprises. "As a retrofit installation, the new system consists primarily of all LED lighting instruments that would require multiple control channe

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UK - The UK's entertainment technology industry is mourning the tragic loss of Dave Cartwright, who passed away in July after suffering a stroke in late June. He was just 46 years old.

Dave's employer, Stuart Gibbons of Le Mark, issued the following statement on behalf of the company:

"It is with the greatest of sadness that Le Mark announce the death of a respected colleague and friend. Not only within the company but also the UK entertainment industry. David Cartwright passed away on Sunday 12 July 2015 at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge. Dave suffered a severe stroke on the evening of Thursday 25 June, having spent a 'usual day' with friends and colleagues at the ABTT trade show. He had returned home that evening to his partner Kirsty Fisher, in St Ives, Cambridgeshire where he was taken ill. To say that Dave will be sorely missed by many would be an understatement.

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USA - It was a celebration of epic proportions as the four original members of The Grateful Dead (Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir) reunited at Soldier's Field, almost 20 years to the day after they played their last concert with Jerry Garcia. They were joined onstage by frequent musical comrades Trey Anastasio, Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti. Seventy thousand Deadheads filled the stadium each night on 3, 4 and 5 July, while millions streamed the show online and watched on Pay Per View to say goodbye to one of the most iconic bands in history.

2015 also marked the Grateful Dead's 50th year in the business. The show was produced by Peter Shapiro and Madison House Presents. Bandit Lites provided the lighting for the final three shows, where lighting designers Candace Brightman (The Grateful Dead's original, long time LD) and Paul Hoffman used more than 500 fi

  1. Audiosure and Chauvet Professional at Mediatech Africa 2015
  2. Clay Paky hits the road with The Rolling Stones
  3. LumenRadio appoints RM Multimedia as exclusive distributor in Italy
  4. grandMA2 in control for the SEA Games ceremonies
  5. PLASA Show reveals first details of seminar content for 2015
  6. Beach Boys bring summer To Boston with Chauvet
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