Belgium - Tegen de Sterren Op (TDSO) is a highly popular, TV series on Flemish commercial channel VTM that uncompromisingly satirises and sends up politicians, celebrities and anyone else on the ‘fair game’ radar - all in the name of incisive entertainment by a very talented cast.
There is also an equally talented production team behind this success, including creative practice Painting with Light, who were tasked with designing a completely new set together with lighting and video.
They worked on the set elements with scenic specialist Deusjevoo, their near neighbours at Genk’s C-MINE complex. It was a visual concept that brought an urban chic feel to the seventh TDSO series, also delivering dynamic lighting and video.
The show was recorded in the NEP Studios in Londerzeel with a live audience and was produced by Dedsit.
Two interconnected stages we

UK - Open Technology will secure energy savings of up to 40 per cent for Cardiff University after installing its intelligent lighting system to an additional four lecture theatres across the campus.
Last year the company was commissioned to install its LiGO intelligent lighting system in seven of the University’s lecture theatres. The installation, done by consultants Houghton Greenlees and installers Evans Electrical, brought the total of LiGO controllers across the university campus to more than 30.
Cardiff University explained that Open Technology and LiGO were chosen due to the lighting system’s features, which include: presence detection to reduce energy use when rooms are unoccupied; time control settings to match occupancy times for lecture theatres; and, daylight balancing to complement available daylight.
These features will deliver up to 40 per cent

Singapore - The National Museum of Singapore is the nation’s oldest museum, and its exhibits are among the most progressive. Its galleries adopt cutting-edge and multi-perspective ways of representing history and culture, to redefine the conventional museum experience.
The museum’s Glass Rotunda currently hosts an immersive digital art installation, titled Story of the Forest. It is inspired by the National Museum of Singapore’s prized collection, the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings. This prized collection is brought to life through a spectacular interactive digital presentation in which visitors are transported to the natural ecology of 19th century Malaya, viewed through the eyes of artists of that time and re-imagined today through digital art and technology.
In 2014, the museum closed off the Glass Rotunda, to explore new and i

USA - The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival returned to the 700 acre field known affectionately as The Farm with more than 65,000 in attendance in search of good vibes and great music.
Bandit Lites was proud to be asked by Lambda Productions to provide a lighting package for multiple stages, the iconic Tower at Bonnaroo, along with several floor packages for artists in attendance.
This year’s line-up of more than 100 acts included U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Weeknd, Chance the Rapper, Major Lazer, Flume, Lorde, The XX, Travis Scott, Cage the Elephant, Marshmello and The Head and the Heart.
U2’s show designer, Willie Williams, designed the mainstage festival system for U2’s immense show on Friday night. It was then dropped, re-hung and re-configured for the acts to use on Saturday and Sunday.
“Willie’s design had a similar flavour to their curren

UK - Anna Valley helped LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art) celebrate their new £28.2m training centre by providing AV for their official opening event on Wednesday 14 June. Attended by Royal Patron HRH Princess Alexandra and alumni including Brian Cox CBE, David Suchet CBE, Ruth Wilson and Jemma Redgrave, the event showcased the new theatres and training spaces that are transforming LAMDA’s west London home.
Anna Valley provided a turnkey AV solution for the event’s gala performance. Guests in the 200-seat Sainsbury Theatre watched students perform against the backdrop of a developing photographic timeline which was projected using two 21k projectors onto a 14.4m x 7m cyclorama fed by a Macbook Pro running Qlab.
Because space in The Sainsbury Theatre was limited, Anna Valley also filmed the event using two Panasonic AW-UE70 4K remote-head cameras a

USA - Country superstar Eric Church’s Holdin’ My Own tour begins to create an immersive experience for fans as soon as they enter the concert venue. Forget standard house lights. The first thing that strikes visitors when they walk into the arena, whether it’s Barclay Centre in Brooklyn or Staples Centre in LA, is the warm white (and very bright) glow from the 63 Chauvet Professional STRIKE 1 fixtures in Church’s touring rig.
Butch Allen of Blame Funnel Creative, who specced the multi formatted STRIKE 1 units from Christie Lights, uses them in lieu of house lights to set an emotional tone for Church’s deeply personal tour. “We wanted the whole arena itself to be part of the show, to create a totally immersive environment, since this tour is all about Eric connecting to his fans,” said Allen. “The STRIKE 1s are our house lights. Then, once the concert starts,

UK - The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, London has just completed a three-week run of Robert Anton Wilson’s play, Cosmic Trigger, directed by Daisy Campbell and produced by The Cockpit Theatre.
Dave Wybrow, artistic director at The Cockpit contacted PRG XL Video for help in solving a video projection conundrum they encountered whilst planning to stage Cosmic Trigger.
Dave discussed the challenges they faced, bringing their creative visions to life: “We’d wanted to produce Cosmic Trigger at The Cockpit for a long time, I’m not only a huge fan of Robert Anton Wilson, but also the seventies American counter-culture he represents so well. Cosmic Trigger is a complicated piece to produce, it’s basically a play within a play within a play—and is more a play about ideas than it is about characters.
“Previous productions have been prese

UK - Triple E has supplied a ModTruss centrepiece for the Greenpeace Field at Glastonbury Festival.
Commissioned by Factory Settings and designed to highlight the Greenpeace campaign to protect forests, the 20m tree comes alive at night, serving as a hub for exclusive DJ sets and a beacon of the Stand for Forests campaign.
The ModTruss structure is simple to put together. The Factory Settings team was able to build the tree at Worthy Farm from Triple E drawings, ticking the requisite safety boxes in the process.
Lucy Edelstein, project manager at Triple E, comments: “We were delighted the Factory Settings’ team approached us with their designs. We made a 3D drawing for approval, test built the tree and shipped the parts.”
Factory Settings’ director, Lucien Mansell, says: “ModTruss is a unique product ideally suited to a one-off bespoke item lik

France - The Accor Hotel has played host to its share of high-profile sporting events, such as the World Indoor Athletics Championships. Recently, the 18,000 capacity venue was the site of another sports spectacular as it welcomed the Meeting de Paris Indoor, a one day track and field event that featured some of France’s top Olympic athletes such as Kevin Mayer and Renaud Lavillenie.
French production house Franck Sono provided suitably energetic visuals for the meet with a collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Algam.
A total of 15 Maverick Hybrids, 16 Rogue R1 FX-Bs, 15 R1 Beams and 18 Nexus 5x5 fixtures lent added impact to the competition by creating a variety of impactful, and often contrasting looks throughout the venue. This was especially evident at the main podium, which was the centre of spectator and media attention.
To illuminate th

Europe - Popular Australian progressive rock band, Northlane, is currently travelling the European festival circuit with an ultra-compact dLive system from Allen & Heath to manage both FOH and monitor sound.
“I’ve come straight over from two years on a dLive S Class S5000/DM64 system on monitors with Bring me the Horizon, and wanted to keep the same workflow with Northlane,” explains engineer, Jared Daly. “As the band are from Australia, their gear is nearly always in a fly-in configuration; everything is in custom wooden racks that slot into fly-able pelican cases that all weigh 32KG. For this reason, the band decided to purchase the C1500 Surface and DM48 MixRack to manage both FOH & monitors.”
The C1500 is equipped with a Waves network card to allow virtual sound-checks and live recordings of all the band’s performances.
“The dLive surfac

UK - Illumination specialists LED Creative supported set designer Rudi Thackray and lighting director Gurdip Mahal, in helping set the scene for James Corden and The Late Late Show’s recent visit to London.
Filmed in front of a live studio audience, The Late Late Show transferred its regular format of star guests, sketches and musical performance from its US home for a run of shows at Central Hall Westminster. Maintaining the general feel of the US show, Rudi Thackray’s vibrant set, shrouded in fluorescent pinks and blues, was a perfect backdrop to the show, contrasting perfectly against the grandiose surroundings of the venue.
One of the key features in the design was the inclusion of over 40 LED Creative Sigma Pulse Wands, cleverly placed throughout the set to provide ultra convenient, colour shape and movement. Quick to install and easy to control,

UK - Garsington Opera Pavilion has undergone a number of major additions to its existing structure ahead of its summer 2017 programme of events that started at the beginning of June, thanks to Unusual Rigging. Visitors to the pavilion will this year experience enhanced protection from the unpredictable British weather as well as additional flexible space beneath the seating tier which will increase the champagne bar area as well as acting as a gallery space.
Angus Boyd-Heron, events manager for Garsington, said: "The award winning pavilion which Unusual constructed in 2010 was built as a demountable structure and has gone from strength to strength. Each year, we bring Unusual Rigging back to make some additions and improvements, which have escalated into some pretty major works as our ideas have become larger. As our ambitions grow and our season now extended enabling more p

UK - Having successfully produced Edinburgh’s first open air dance festival for the Fly Club in the city centre’s Princes Street Gardens last Autumn, alongside sister company Creation Live, Martin Audio partners VME moved to the outskirts of the Scottish capital, and the spectacular 6500-acre Hopetoun House Estate overlooking the River Forth, for the second Fly Open Air Festival.
Unlike the fixed Princes Street bandstand a festival infrastructure needed to be created in the grounds of the 17th century mansion and sound levels closely observed - a challenge that Martin Audio’s award-winning MLA Multi-cellular Loudspeaker Array was more than equal to.
“The scaffolding structure didn't help us - we couldn't get the height we wanted, which created a number of physical challenges,” admitted VME head of sound, Mark Cleator. “This required some late changes to the

Ukraine - Within the vast sound production called upon for this year’s Eurovision 2017 in Kyiv, a pair of TiMax SoundHub audio delay matrix units were supplied by Black Box Music (BBM) to manage multi-zone PA level and delay alignment between Main and B-stage performance areas.
The setup revisits a technique pioneered for Adele’s recent record-breaking world-wide arena tour. The TiMax SoundHub-S16 systems were inserted between Digico SD7’s and Lake master system processing feeding the amps, which in turn fed multiple distributed L’Acoustics line array hangs, subs and fills.
As the performance switched between the two stages, the TiMax dynamic delay-matrix delivered all mix outputs from main and backup console/system processor chains via onboard 96KHz SRC’s, to seamlessly re-align and focus all PA elements onto the current stage.
The power and versati

Israel - Tel Aviv based Light Architects Cochavi & Klein are known for their style and propensity for invention and they are also impressed with Robe’s Spiider LED wash beams.
The designers seized the opportunity of the Picnic Passover with Black Coffee, a pumping electronic music event presented by The Tripping in Tel Aviv’s most famous urban oasis, Hayarkon Park, to utilise 48 x Spiiders and 24 x Robe Pointes on a circular trussing structure, forming a massive ‘sun’, which was winched above the crowds on a crane.
The sold-out event featured sets from award-winning, rising-star South African DJ and music producer Black Coffee, plus DJs Jenia Tersol & Benji. They, together with a hugely enthusiastic audience, enjoyed the unique setting of the park, which is known for its magical aura and ancient rocks brought from all over Israel.
These ro

Europe - Canadian industrial band Skinny Puppy might not be mainstream airplay but the band has been around for decades and is currently touring Europe beneath an intelligent lighting rig that includes Elation Professional ACL 360 Bar effect lights and SixBar 1000 LED colour-changing battens.
Pioneers of the electro-industrial genre, Skinny Puppy, known for their theatrical and sometimes controversial live performances, enjoys a dedicated following and has charted in both North America and Europe. They have just completed the European leg of their Down the Sociopath tour.
Lighting has been designed and is under the direction of Eric Price (Thrice, Underoath, Bayside), who, although working with the group for the first time, has meshed with the band to create a design that complements the band’s complex and layered sound.
“For the Skinny Puppy design, everythi

Iberia - For Ricky Martin’s monitor engineer, Steve May, DiGiCo consoles hold two big advantages: their I/O capacity - which means he never worries about running out of inputs or outputs - and the ability to switch seamlessly between consoles in the range. Both have made life easier as he and Front of House engineer Chris ‘Privet’ Hedge travel round Spain and Portugal on the current leg of Ricky Martin’s tour.
The tour has taken in many of the major cities in Spain, including Madrid, Granada, Valencia, Seville, Barcelona, as well as the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, and finishes in Bilbao. Three rental companies are supplying equipment, with PRG Spain and Llusovi each handling six shows and Fluge two. The equipment inventory varies from company to company and although Steve specifies an SD7, depending on availability, he has used both this and an SD5 as his monitor

Bermuda - The America’s Cup sailing race is the oldest trophy in international sport, dating back to 1851. And for the 35th edition, presented by Louis Vuitton, the location was Bermuda, as the event moved to the iconic Great Sound.
Local Bermuda Broadcasting Company (BBC) was appointed as the official broadcast partner, and they responded by creating an advanced fibre network between the America’s Cup Village at the Royal Naval Dockyard, the transmission, editing and news gathering hub, and their own studio back at base.
They did this via a BroaMan advanced fibre network - this has not only enabled them to provide viewers and listeners with live coverage of all the racing over the five weeks via terrestrial TV and radio broadcasts over IP but also to feed its web and social media platforms. This has included taking video and commentaries out on the water, from he

UK - WI has supplied staging, elevators and extensive automation elements to the Take That ‘Wonderland’ tour which kicked off at the Genting Arena, Birmingham.
The lively, colourful carnivalesque aesthetic is the vision of the band’s creative director Kim Gavin and the result of some serious creative and technical talents who have collaborated to bring action packed drama to a strong, highly entertaining performance by the band.
The WI team was led by Hans Willems and Koen Peeters and the company was asked on-board by production manager Chris Vaughan. They worked closely with production designer Ray Winkler for Stufish, scenic designer Misty Buckley, lighting designer Tim Routledge and video designer Alex Leinster to specify and construct the numerous custom elements.
To deal with the complex and rigorous health and safety aspects of the project WI brought

UK - Symphotech has been entrusted to oversee health and safety and sound monitoring at Let's Rock - The Retro Festival as it heads to eight locations throughout the summer, June 2017.
Famed for its retro throwbacks and vintage fun, The Let’s Rock concert has already visited Cookham, Shrewsbury, Bristol and Leeds, heading onto Norwich, Exeter, Southampton and London. Organisers, UK Live, keen to take their responsibility seriously, brought in Symphotech to ensure the highest level of health and safety services and to make certain noise levels didn’t affect local residents.
UK Live first contracted Symphotech to oversee health and safety last year and following a successful run of the events, UK Live has continued this relationship and also brought in Symphotech’s noise monitoring team to ensure minimum disruption to the local area.
Symphotech’s legal and

USA - Early June was rocking in Music City. The hometown Predators were selling out the Bridgestone arena for the Stanley Cup finals, and the Country Music Awards celebration was in full swing.
Although the city's hockey team came up a little short in its championship quest, the CMA festivities were all they were cranked up to be, as Nashville's downtown rang out with parties and festivals during the awards weekend.
Among the hottest CMA celebrations was the one at Piranha's, a 10,000sq.ft sports bar and music hall on Second Avenue, where 38 bands performed over three days, supported by a Jeff Hinton-designed lightshow that featured Chauvet DJ Intimidators.
Hinton used six Intimidator Beam LED 350 and six Intimidator Spot 255 IRC fixtures in his design for the Johnny B Enterprises-produced event. He flew his moving lights on two different levels of overhead tru

UK - Liz Hobbs Group, one of the leading promoters and producers of concerts and events in the UK, has invested in a complete LED video wall system from the video division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd. (AC-ET).
Liz Hobbs, who are promoting and producing tours and concerts by Tom Jones, Little Mix, Olly Murs, Craig David and Shane Filan this summer, started using the system at the first gig of the UB40 tour, which opened at Inverness‘ Northern Meeting Park in late May.
The 33sqm, IP65 rated ProLights AlphaPIX6T LED wall consists of 72 panels and was supplied with a full range of rigging, networking, control and ancillary equipment. It will provide the main stage backdrop for many of the shows this summer.
In addition to the LED wall itself, AC-ET supplied video transmission equipment including, Luminex GigaCore data switches, tvONE video switcher / s

UAE - Lighthouse Productions (LHP) from Dubai created a unique visual design for the Islamic Art Awards 2017, staged at the Abu Dhabi National Theatre. Organized by the UAE’s Ministry of Culture & Knowledge Department, the Awards - a poetry, calligraphy and ornamentation competition open to local and non-local poets from within and outside the UAE expressing themselves in classical and Nabati verse - is widely recognized as one of the most important Islamic Art events worldwide.
The LHP team was led by Terry Miranda. When it came to lighting, he and Adrian Guzman specified 80 x Robe luminaires to be right at the centre of the aesthetic.
LHP has successfully been awarded the contract to deliver the event for the last 11 years, chosen for their understanding and appreciation of Islamic art, design and history, parameters which have been evident in all the differen

UK - The Beach Boys and Deacon Blue are two of the latest acts to utilise the Adamson E-Series and S-Series loudspeakers.
Adamson's UK partner The Warehouse Sound Services working with promoter LCC Live designed a substantial Adamson sound reinforcement system for Montrose Music Festival’s 10th Anniversary event last month. The three-day festival featured headline performances from The Beach Boys and Deacon Blue alongside a range of other artists.
LCC Live has worked in conjunction with MoFest since 2013 and has been responsible for bringing top musical acts to the town including Status Quo, Madness, Jools Holland and Bryan Adams.
Montrose Music Festival or MoFest as it has become affectionately known as takes place at the end of May each year in Montrose, Angus. It has become a much anticipated, annual event across Scotland. 10,000 fans packed out the festival

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