Paul Silsby, CTO and co-founder of Proteus Displays, has been developing this technology for more than three years. "We've conceived our system as an artistic cladding system, or a media façade to use the current term, which will be of interest to both architects and designers," he says. "A Proteus Display is robust and straightforward to retro-fit, and once fi
MRL Productions will specialise in providing a complete sound, lighting, video and staging technical service to the corporate event, theatre, fashion show and concert sector.
Their biggest contract to date has been with Great Leighs, the first new racecourse that has been set up in the last 80 years.
John Holmes' new venture - situated between Braintree and Chelmsford - hosts night racing as well as a large number of corporate functions for which MRL has been providing sound and lighting. This includes the opening night when Alexander O'Neal performed in front of an audience of 600.
The company has already developed a cutting-edge hire fleet. This
Nield joins PSCo from Avanti Screenmedia where he held the role of operations director for three years. While at the digital media company he headed up the operation and maintenance of digital media private networks across retail and commercial premises. Previously he worked at Reflex for ten years working in both account handling and senior operational positions.
"I'm thrilled to be joining the PSCo family and contributing to the growth of the company at a key time of development within the sector," says Nield. "My role is to maximise efficiency of the operations departments and to help the team deliver exceptional customer service while we grow the business and open a new office in Birmingham."PSCo Managing Direc
2Ci worked with brand experience company Bugle to create the Guitar Hero Experience, which featured a 103" Panasonic Plasma as the centrepiece to the stage set, where festival goers showed off their skills, rocking out to Rage Against the Machine, the Sex Pistols and the Kaiser Chiefs to name but a few. The most talented of the festival goers were offered special prizes, including the chance to play on the main stage at some festivals.
The 103" Plasma was sourced from trade rental company PSCo, with the company's exclusive Screenlifter which lifts the screen up to 3m in the air at the touch of a button. This was then built into a set to act as a stage backdrop
In the show, choirs from all walks of life went up against each other to find out who had the passion, power and performance necessary to be declared Last Choir Standing. Presenters Nick Knowles and Myleene Klass followed the choirs as they progressed through the contest, joined by a panel of music experts.
Kenyon decided to invest in two Hippotizers after seeing the media server used on another high profile Saturday night light entertainment show and being impressed by how well it handled slow motion and de-focusing shots. On Last Choir Standing, the units were separately feeding moving image content t
Sunday's special interest seminar programme includes two Infocomm seminars; the Institute of Acoustics, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Skills Academy, PMA and Arup feature on Monday; Tuesday sees sessions from the Arcola Theatre, National Theatre, ATG/ABTT and Cirque du Soleil; while Wednesday's line-up is headed by the Institute of Acoustics and CC Skills' Creative Apprenticeships seminar. Technologies For Worship is hosting seminars on every day of the show.
Meanwhile, manufacturer-led sessions include Zero 88 (Sunday), Alcons, Wireless Solution, White Light and Martin Professional (Tuesday) and Cast Software (Wednesda
For integrators FogScreen One is especially interesting since it enables the creation of large-scale installations, says the company.
FogScreen's AV Integrator Programme for the European market is being launched at PLASA08. This programme has been designed to support AV Integrators with conceptual and technical development, to help with presentations of the screen and to provide integrators with an opportunity to purchase affordable demons
Tour News - With a canon of classic songs, unbowed enthusiasm and his musical faculties still sharp, Stevie Wonder has opened his first European tour for a decade. The US star took fans at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena on a two-hour journey through almost 50 years of songs that helped shape soul and pop. A sold-out crowd of 13,500 saw him play with a 10-strong band and four backing singers, including his daughter Aisha. Wonder, 58, now visits Manchester and London before other European cities.Festival News - Amy Winehouse has played her last scheduled show of the year
"Gerben van den Berg's appointment is part of projectiondesign's effort to expand its sales and support resources for its growing customer base in Europe. The company has made several exciting product introductions in the past few months. We want to capitalise on the rising demand for high performance projection" said Chris Axford, international director, sales & marketing at projectiondesign. "Gerben is the ideal candidate to lead our sales effort in this region. He has a strong experience, good knowledge of our customer base and
Lighting designer Yves Aucoin is using Pandoras Box Media Servers and Pandoras Box Media Manager, all communicating with a grandMA lighting desk. The three Media Server GREEN systems render the imagery in real time, all of which are running simultaneously as well as independently on different display technologies.
One system is controlling the extensive LED stage-floor, the second is feeding the Element Labs Stealth package and the third is used for the video switcher that is mixing the camera-feeds with the contents from Pandoras Box. Every Pandoras Box Media Server system
Fireworks in the harbour and lighting the medieval beacon at Dover Castle link the sea, the harbour, and historic white cliffs. A moving soundscape of nostalgic songs with a contemporary twist will complete this show.
Partners and supporters for this event include Kent County Council, Dover District Council, Dover Pride with substantial support from Arts Council England and Dover Harbour Board.
"Just as rugby, karate and roller sports struggle to be recognised as Olympic Sports, so fireworks struggl
Matthew Griffiths, CEO of PLASA, who welcomed the guest speakers and audience members to the launch, told LSI: "We're very proud to be able to host the launch of the Mayor's Green Theatre Plan at PLASA08. Many of the manufacturers represented here on the show floor are already playing an active role in developing new equipment and technologies to help theatres achieve the goals set by the Mayor's Plan, and the lighting and sound industry still has a great contribution to make. PLASA and its members are very keen to work with theatres and other industry bodies, not only to help improve the power efficiency of lighting and sound systems themselves, but also to support and encourage the adoption of the many s
HSL and Electric Fly also recently collaborated to supply all production lighting and design for the 2008 Global Gathering dance festival, and Jevons states, "HSL is always my first choice for lighting rentals. Mike Oates (HSL's project manager) and his team have been fantastic - as always - in providing great service and excellent kit". For this event Electric Fly was working for live brand experience producers, Sevens 7.
The highlight of the two-day music and arts event was a performance from Massive Attack and United Visual Artists (UVA) - the last show of a summer tour that HSL has also
Dr Tim Coker, CEO, comments: "This was our first time at PLASA and we were uncertain how this new product would be received amid today's difficult financial climate. A little to our surprise, the buzz the product has generated has been beyond all our expectations, amplified of course by the Innovation Award. We have seen that this industry has an appetite for new technologies and ideas and every visitor to our stand was most enthusiastic about the product."
For the first time the PLASA Innovation Awards included an environmental prize and Proteus was the inaugural winner. Dr Coker continues: "It has been through develo
The event took place in the historic Governor's Hall at St Thomas' Hospital - a room lined with Victorian wood panelling. The brief was to provide lighting which would accentuate the features of the room without damaging the valuable fabric of the building, and to provide entrance lighting to the event and sting lighting during the Award Ceremony itself.
Point Source Productions rose to the challenge providing a number of free-standing lighting fixtures to create maximum effect with no damage.
ChromaQ ColorBlock DB4 LED upligh
"The main criteria for this purchase by the Azerbaijan government were product and service quality," says Provid's Necdet Ercingöz. "The order is being organised in two halves, the first 100 panels were delivered in June this year. These panels have already had their first use as a giant screen in Heyder Aliyev Park, Baku's most popular square."
In the park, highlights of Euro 2008 were shown, with the Turkey versus Germany game attracting a large. Live footage from AzTV's broadcast of the military parade cele
The show is renowned for its visuals - created by Adam Smith and stored and played back via a Catalyst digital media server.
Digital media specialists Projected Image Digital (PID) spoke to the Chemical Bros 2008 tour show programmer Matthew Button about his media server of choice. He sought a lightweight, fully portable solution for visuals storage and playback. Both he and lighting tech Toby Dennis invested in Mac Book Pros to which they fitted the latest 32Gb Mtron 2.5 inch solid state hard drives and installed the latest version of Catalyst. The Mtron is turbo-charged to give super-quick video access time.
The visuals show was originally programmed on a
The new Academy is in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, on the site of the old museum, aquarium, and planetarium and opens to the public this week. The building is expected to receive a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum rating from the US G
Barco SLM R12+ projectors were used to command and control the entire launch programme at both the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre and Beijing Aerospace Control Centre. The monitoring continued through the duration of the spacewalk and concluded with its culmination, when the astronauts' re-entry module landed in central Inner Mongolia.
More than just delivering an advanced technology product in support of the event, Barco also provided on-site technical standby around the clock via a specially assigned technical team.
"There's no understating the i
Against the backdrop of the impressive facade of the Casa Poporului (Parliament Palace), one of the world's largest buildings, the city's insignia hovered in the air in the form of full-colour laser projections on a large WaterScreen. Space-spanning laser beams, beam fans, and light tunnels criss-crossed the area. Massive fireballs and 40m high fountains lit the night sky, in tune with the music.
This was the tenth time that tarm Showlaser had staged a multimedia spectacle in the Rumanian capital city and the team tarm will be back in Bucharest in late October for another project.
(Jim Evans)
Showtech was contracted by event organizer Peter Jones Special Events to deliver the two special rigging items for the production. The Engineering and OHS considerations of delivering these two effects were several months in the planning and had to meet the strict guidelines of the Victorian OHS regulations, the guidelines of the stadium management, and the challenges of not impacting on the playing surface. The match begins 20 minutes after the ceremony was completed.
The first effect was six singers appearing high on the scoreboard roof. 50m above the field. The performers, camera operators, audio, and pyrotechnics crews all had to be closely coordinated so as not
Held at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, the Mondial de Automobile is a showcase for over 500 international brands and a celebration of the European automotive industry. This year, the show will be celebrating its 110th anniversary and pays host to over 90 world premières. It runs from 4 to 19 October 2008.
The use of black LED is a major trademark of this year's show with many auto manufacturers choosing Barco's new true black LED displays, the NX-4 and NX-6, as an integral part of their booth design.
"Alongside the trend to black, creative use of LED at auto shows also continues a dominant trend," says Andr
The event ran every Monday night from early July until the closing party on 22 September and featured new production and effects gear including a customized DJ booth and the state-of-the-art LED backdrop.
"The use of lasers was not an option this year so we took a look into the LED screens on the market," says Bart Roelen, production manager for Tiësto. "We couldn't do lots of rigging in the club so lights had to be hung on a steel layer construction placed upstage. Video is a very important element of Tiësto's show so we needed a system that could be placed on
