UK - When Matt Strigden of SRD Projects was looking for a track solution for a new drama venue at Channing School in Highgate, North London, he turned to Doughty Engineering.
Having worked with the Doughty team for years, Strigden, who heads up the projects department at SRD, knew that they were the right team for the job. He said: “I know Doughty well - the people and the products. I have known sales managers, Dan Phillips and Laurence Dyer for nearly 20 years. Both are extremely helpful whenever I have a design question and are really good at providing the answers we need.”
SRD Projects works across all sorts of sectors; theatres, education, fitness, houses of worship and retail, providing lighting and audio solutions in these spaces and so regularly find themselves turning to Doughty for the right kit. This project at Channing School involved restoring one of th

UK - The highly lyrically complex songs of Laura Marling, performing solo on an acoustic guitar, brings with it demands for a special kind of lighting. Showcasing her latest album, the Grammy- and Mercury-nominated Song for Our Daughter, her recent three-week sold-out club and theatre tour - her first in four and a half years - was highlighted by two nights at London’s Roundhouse.
Marling’s long-term LD, Jon Barker, recently formed a collaboration with fellow designer and long-term colleague, Dom Smith, with the pair now operating under the name NeonBlack. Their mission: to tell the story of the artist through light.
Since this was also a low-production tour, they were able to achieve most of their objectives by deploying 16 of GLP’s impression X4 Bar 20 battens.
The rig needed to suit Academy-sized venues where the lighting needed to be nimble and d

Turkey - Earlier this year, Istanbul production company Autonomy partnered with virtual production facility MGX Studio and Formula 1 to deliver an immersive commercial project for the country’s financial hub and official sponsors of last year’s Formula 1 Turkish Grand Prix, Istanbul Financial Centre (IFC). The project was filmed at MGX Studio, with Brompton Technology Tessera processing delivering optimum colour management for the LED wall.
From extreme close-ups of the F1 vehicle and the driver, to the revving engine sounds as the car navigates through the streets of Istanbul, and images of IFC reflected on the driver’s helmet, MGX Studio’s virtual production facility offered a spread of creative possibilities to the Autonomy team.
“Achieving optimum colour profiles and creating realistic reflections and natural background lighting were key challenges for t

USA - Lighting designer/director, Brian Jenkins of Flicker Designs had specified two of MDG's award-winning, dual haze and fog generators, theONE, for the band’s 2020 tour before it was postponed due to the pandemic. After an 18-month enforced break, the tour resumed last summer, with the band visiting many of North America's largest outdoor amphitheatres playing to 15,000-30,000 capacity crowds.
Rehearsals for the eight-week tour, which was in support of the band’s seventh studio album, Jordi, started in late July with the first show slated for 10th August 2021 at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn Washington. The final date took place in October at the Concord Pavilion, Concord California.
Jenkins chose theONE for both its versatility and powerful output capabilities: “We specifically needed a hefty, high-output unit for the outdoor amphitheatre show

France - At a height of 2,300m, the new Maya Altitude Restaurant is located in the popular ski area, Three Valleys, in the French Alps. Its terrace offers 360° views of the Belleville Valley and Mont Blanc. A newly-installed Nexo sound system provides music to drinkers and diners inside the venue and out by day, before stepping things up with a full DJ set for après skiers.
A system design using another speaker brand was already in existence before Monaco-based audio-visual consultants Mediacom suggested that a Nexo system could deliver higher performance at a lower cost.
“We worked with the Nexo engineering support team to design a system using ID24s supplemented by IDS110 subs inside the restaurant, and Nexo ID14 and P12s outside,” explains Mediacom’s Christophe Chary.
“With a sumptuous, Tibetan-themed décor, it was important that the speakers create

Bosnia - The reputation of Martin Audio’s scalable resolution Wavefront Precision continues to spread. Last year, the company’s Bosnia & Herzegovina distributor, SD Sistemi, sold a large WPL system to prominent hire company ProRent, who followed up their initial purchase in September with a further acquisition three months later, with the upcoming events season in mind.
“They really needed a larger system for big outdoor events and for general hire use,” reports SD Sistemi’s Tijana Milovanovic.
The sale had been initiated as far back as February 2020, but the global pandemic brought a summary halt to proceedings. In the end ProRent committed to the system on brand reputation alone, in time to fire it up for the first time on 14 February in the Borik Sports Hall in Banja Luka for Croatian artist Massimo Savić. ProRent fielded 12 x WPL per side, with SXH21

Sweden - Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra performed a ‘musical adventure’ at the imposing Göteborgs Konserthus recently, enveloped in video projections driven by Hippotizer Media Servers.
The 90-minute orchestral performance, entitled The Crescendoing City, immersed the audience in a ‘visual flow’ designed to complement the piece.
Stockholm-based Pixelfield Studios - styled PXLFLD - was commissioned by the Gothenburg Symphonic Orchestra to design a visual concert experience based on ‘The City’ as an overarching concept. The PXLFLD team responded to the brief by considering what defines a city, taking in architecture, communications, culture and, most importantly, people. Over two nights of performances, audiences were treated to sweeping cityscapes, eerie urban scenes and flashes of abstract colour and patterns.
“We needed a reliable

Israel - Atzmaut Beach (AKA Hilton Beach) is a popular destination for the young local surfing community and tourists (in more regular times) alike, and boasts plenty of bars and restaurants. Hilton Bay Absolut Beach & Surf features a high-end audio installation courtesy of Void Acoustics and Israeli Void Acoustics distributor – New Audio Pro.
Established in 2018, Hilton Bay Beach & Surf occupies 300sq.m of prime seafront real estate immediately in front of (but not connected with) the Hilton Hotel. The venue has recently been transformed with a complete refurbishment from the structure itself, down to the soft furnishings. And front and centre of this transformation has been the deployment of a new Void Acoustics sound system.
The venue is owned by Ronen Miley - a local nightlife entrepreneur of over 25 years’ experience. “These days our customers are lo

New Zealand - The Halberg Awards celebrates the country’s sporting excellence. The 2022 extravaganza was staged at the Spark Arena in Auckland, this time with a reduced live audience of 100 seated guests (usually 1000), a measure applied late-on as the country went to a COVID ‘red alert’ level. It broadcast live on Sky TV.
The set, lighting and visuals were designed collaboratively by LD Jason Steel working closely with Simon Garrett of Big Picture. The company delivered lighting and visual equipment, including the nearly 100 Robe fixtures utilised on the show.
The starting point for lighting the diamond-shaped stage was a 25m wide cross-shaped 6mm LED video surface, curving gently round at the ends, a monolithic structure that set the aesthetic tone and look of the event.
The stage was built with wings at 45-degrees and featured a large ramped central run

UK - Britannia Row Productions deployed a full audio package for the annual awards ceremony while continuing its partnership with The BRIT School.
The BRIT Awards returned to London’s O2 Arena complete with performances by Adele, Ed Sheeran, Bring Me The Horizon, Little Simz, Liam Gallagher, Sam Fender, Dave, Anne-Marie, KSI, and Rising Star Award recipient, Holly Humberstone.
Britannia Row’s relationship with the event continues to go from strength to strength, with the company’s Josh Lloyd resuming his role as system designer and FOH mixer. Lloyd created a PA system design that would allow the music to blend effortlessly into the stage design by avoiding key sightlines, while giving clean and clear feeds to the experienced broadcast team.
“The design changed in the weeks leading up to the event due to the stage and seating being reconfigured in the ven

UK - Sound Technology, the UK distributor of Martin Professional, has reported that a large quantity of the MAC Ultra Performance were supplied by various dealers, including White Light, Stage Electrics and Hawthorn. The high-output profile luminaires replace existing generics and tungsten sources. A total of 23 have been added to the standard overhead rig, replacing older generics within the 1,150-capacity Olivier Theatre, with a further 10, provided earlier by White Light, to be stored in Lighting Resources to be called on as necessary by lighting designers.
Matt Drury, head of lighting, explains: “In the Olivier we needed a punchier fixture and had been looking at an alternative source prior to lockdown. We knew that by 2022 we would need something of that ilk but during the interruption the MAC Ultra Performance and MAC Ultra Wash came along, and they did so at just t

UK - The beginning of March saw spatial audio specialist, Sonosphere, take part in a world-first multi-venue event at the 5G Festival Showcase. Underpinned by 5G technology, it involved over 20 artists playing simultaneously across three UK music venues: Metropolis Studios, the O2 Blueroom at The O2 and Brighton Dome.
Over the last two years, Sonosphere has been working with eight other heavyweight organisations - Audiotonix, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival, LiveFrom, Mativision, Metropolis Studios, Virgin Media O2, and Warner Music Group - who worked collectively with Digital Catapult, the UK authority on advanced digital technology, to explore the untapped potential of 5G for the live music industry and provide a blueprint for how technology could play a key role in the future of the sector as part of the wider £200m DCMS 5G Testbeds & Trials Programme.
T

USA - Technical Arts Group (TAG) provided SJ Lighting of Westlake Village, California with IP65-rated Ayrton Perseo Beam and Domino fixtures for the New York edition of the Rolling Loud global music festival last autumn. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.
TAG was formed in 2021 and specialises in lighting, audio, video, staging, special effects and event management. The company has offices in Secaucus, New Jersey and Miami. It furnished lighting, sound and video equipment for Stage 4 of Miami’s Rolling Loud fest last July then was asked to supply lighting for New York’s two main stages and sound and video gear for the third. The three-day event at Citi Field drew more than 80,000 fans to performances from some of hip hop’s biggest emcees.
The IP65-rated Perseo and Domino fixtures proved to be an inspired choice fo

Serbia - Earlier this month, the Novi Sad Fair celebrated the Migration of Souls. Held in conjunction with the city being named a European Capital of Culture for 2022, the 11-day, multimedia event features presentations by writers and thinkers, as well as art exhibits and music/dance acts by an impressive global collection of performers.
Each day’s session concluded with a concert, and as befits the theme of the event, the roster of artist was varied, beginning with Japanese experimental guitarist Miyavi, on to the Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra and The Chalaban band, which performs Moroccan music with a central European twist, plus Original Enigma voices.
Chameleon Rental delivered the lighting with help from an impressive collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures. The rig featured 28 units of the Maverick MK2 Wash and 16 of the Maverick MK1 Spot, as wel

UK - Specialist audio visual design and installation company, North Star Engineers is behind the ship-wide AV system design and installation of the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, the Global Mercy - the newly built vessel of Mercy Ships. The project has been designed and delivered from the head office of North Star Engineers in the city of York.
Mercy Ships is an international charity providing a team of volunteer nurses, doctors, surgeons and other crew from all over the world.
The Global Mercy was docked and open for physical and virtual tours in the Port of Rotterdam between 26 February-14 March 2022, before setting sail on 15 March for Granadilla Tenerife to continue outfitting in preparation for service within West Africa, the first of many new missions expected over the next 50 years.
The team at North Star Engineers has been responsible for all s

USA - Lighting metal band Killswitch Engage means slamming your foot down on the accelerator and never really letting up, according to lighting designer Cody James.
The longtime designer for KSE, James describes the process this way: “Killswitch on stage has no brake pedal. Even during tuning breaks, it's a full-on experience the entire time. The lights have to reflect that. When the band is coming at you at 100 mph, so should everything around them on stage.”
When lighting the band’s recently concluded 32-city Atonement Tour 2022, James powered his Chauvet Professional anchored rig with a ChamSys MagicQ MQ250M and extra wing.
Innovative strobing played a big part in James’ design vision for this busked show. Reflecting the band’s intense sound, he conjured up a varied mix of bold strobing looks, mixing in different colours and coming at the stage and a

Australia - To gain the necessary power and versatility for their multi-functional event spaces, Rocco’s Bar & Gusto acquired a range of Harman Professional audio-visual solutions.
Rocco’s Bar & Gusto is a restaurant and venue located inside United Cinemas in Warriewood, New South Wales that hosts parties, private business meetings, sporting and dining events in its multipurpose event spaces. Because the venue space can be divided into multiple separate areas to accommodate a variety of events and meetings, the restaurant required an audio-visual solution with the flexibility to route and matrix signals to their respective zones. To meet this request, Rocco’s acquired a fully networked audio-visual system featuring solutions by AMX, BSS, JBL Professional, Crown and AKG.
“We wanted an immersive experience for Rocco’s Bar & Gusto, and the Harman sol

UK - The BandLab NME Awards 2022 returned to the O2 Academy Brixton in London on 2 March 2, with the crew from TSL Lighting responsible for installing the rig and lighting system in place for Renegade’s lighting designer, Nick Gray
“As always, working with TSL was a pleasure,” says Gray. “Their attention to detail, prep and general approach is second to none. For this show, we had an awful lot of lighting, most of which couldn’t be accessed once installed so I needed to work with a team that did their utmost to make sure we didn’t have any equipment issues.
“The team of technicians were very familiar and absolutely amazing. TSL were an ideal partner for Renegade on the show and proved again why we rate them so highly.”
The main lighting rig extended out into the auditorium and was steeply raked to be visually impressive on camera. The show compris

UK - Whitwam AV Integration has solved intelligibility issues and improved audio coverage at St. George's Chapel Windsor with the installation of a new K-array loudspeaker system.
Originally built in the 15th century by King Edward IV, the chapel has been the scene of many royal services and weddings.
Whitwam AV Integration has installed a modern and sympathetically styled audio-visual system that has transformed the way that words and music are experienced throughout the building, blending with the magnificent and historically rich setting.
The loudspeaker system from K-array focuses on providing superior vocal intelligibility in what is a generally challenging acoustic environment with a typical RT60 of three or four seconds, so the audio design emphasised the placement of sources relatively close to the listener to increase direct sound and reduce reflections.

South Africa - Situated in the heart of Cape Town, GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World is the largest venue of its kind in South Africa, featuring a Las Vegas-scale casino, two hotels, conference facilities, dining establishments, an ice rink and the Grand Arena - a 5,000 capacity multi-purpose venue that has played host to acts such as Bryan Adams, Sting, James Blunt, Rammstein and Kylie Minogue.
In 2020, the arena underwent a thorough refit of its audio system, with the replacement designed around DiGiCo’s Quantum 338 digital mixing console, chosen to fulfil the requirements of international touring riders and deliver quality audio, processing and connectivity within a space-saving format.
The Grand Arena first started researching new technology in 2017 when the current infrastructure was approaching the end of its lifespan, and an upgrade needed to be found.<

UAE - Equipson's award winning LightShark range took centre stage at Expo 2020 in Dubai when it was used in both the Spanish and Angolan Pavilions for DMX control of different exhibition and stage spaces.
"The software's FX engine allowed us to integrate the lighting with the rest of the audio-visual systems in an agile and simple way," says Marvin Ryan, a technician from the Philippines and head of lighting at the Angola Pavilion.
His views were reinforced by Juan Gonzalez, technical manager for events at the Spanish Pavilion, who highlighted the simplicity of LightShark's user interface. “With hardly any previous experience in handling the system, it was very easy to start operating it almost from day one,” he says.
Designed to showcase the best of art, architecture, innovation and technology, Expo 2020 Dubai runs until the end of March and features more t

USA - The Slow Burn Theatre Company’s production of Kinky Boots at the Broward Centre for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale featured an engaging Clifford Michael Spulock lighting design that included Chauvet Professional Maverick, Rogue and COLORado fixtures.
Spulock wove his lighting around scenic designer David Rockwell’s set pieces endowing them with an extra degree of realism that made the drama unfolding on stage more engaging. The red brick ‘Price and Son’ shoe factory in Northampton, England takes on a, ethereal, timeless look when bathed in warm light, setting, a suitable tone, given that plans that will make dreams come true are hatched in the factory.
The factory set piece has two levels of translucent windows. Spulock gave them a magical glow by placing COLORado Batten 144 Tour fixtures behind this wall. Drawing on the colour mixing prowe

Poland - Lighting and production rental company Transcolor has invested in new Robe moving lights and remained busy throughout the pandemic with its five full-size studios and rehearsal rooms which have been utilised for television and movie productions, promo and advertising shoots and other assorted events. Two of the studios are among the largest in Warsaw, and these have continued with regular TV productions and clients as well as hosting a range of new clients producing digital and streamed events.
Transcolor’s head of technical Szymon Kosicki explained that, like everyone, they have faced major challenges, but Transcolor has always been un, with a relatively compact administration setup for such a large operation. Simon is responsible for the kit and its prep for the various projects and shows.
The demand for the studios has soared over the last two years as m

USA - The Knoxville Museum of Art held its annual fundraising soiree, L’ Amour du Vin, complete with ‘fine wine, culinary marvels, and both a silent and live auction’. Bandit Lites has been a long-time partner with the museum and donated the lighting system to help set the creative atmosphere for the space.
“No one brings a vision to life better than Bandit Lites,” says Carla May Paré, director of fundraising events. “This year, inspired by a painting by artist Gordon Cheung, the lighting design for L’Amour du Vin created an immersive, magical, and epic visual backdrop highlighting both the contemporary focus of the artist’s work and nods to historical ideologies - old word meets new world. The artist himself was blown away by the design, including a new element - his work projected onto the ceiling of the KMA’s Bailey Hall.”
In addition to light

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