Latvia - Dataton WATCHOUT helped bring a welcome burst of colour and light to the Latvian capital during darkest November. The Staro Riga 2014 Festival of Light attracted an estimated 500,000 visitors with light processions, art installations and architectural projections. Dataton WATCHOUT multi-display software provided projection mapping on four of the city's landmark buildings.

The Staro Riga Festival of Light is the biggest in the region and this year's event also celebrated Riga as the joint European Capital of Culture 2014. System integrator Solaris, based in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, supplied WATCHOUT systems and hardware for projection mapping on the facades of the Astor Riga Hotel, Congress Centre, St Peter's Church and the Academy of Arts during the five-day festival.

"We were brought in to realize the technical aspects of the shows in the city based on our m

USA - Home of the Carolina Panthers NFL football team, Bank of America Stadium has installed 30 steerable CAL column array loudspeakers from Meyer Sound to provide exceptional intelligibility for 37,000 fans in its upper deck area. The slender profile of CAL harmoniously blends in with flagpoles, solving an aesthetic challenge in distributed sound systems for sports venues. CAL will demonstrated live at the ISE trade show in Amsterdam in February 2015.

"The Panthers' stadium doesn't have a continuous lighting catwalk like other NFL stadiums, so there was no place to put the sizeable conventional speakers we would need to cover the upper level without having large clusters up on poles," says Mark Graham, the system designer and an associate of consultants Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams (WJHW). "Aesthetically, the clusters would have been a hard sell to the a

UK - The ShowDome at Our Dynamic Earth (ODE) in Edinburgh has been transformed with support from Electrosonic, which provided refurbishment and technical upgrades to one of Scotland's premier destination visitor attractions. In a two-phase project, Electrosonic has given the space a full-dome projection upgrade, a new theatre layout, 106 new seats, and a state-of-the-art server and content management system.

ODE showcases earth science by taking visitors on a journey through our planet's past, present and future through interactive exhibits and a stop in the 14m ShowDome theatre, which originally opened in 1999.

"The client came to us for our ideas and proposal, which we developed with them," says Electrosonic project manager Phil Downie. "The objectives were to upgrade the theatre to provide a higher-quality feel and experience for the audience, and to increase

UK - When the X Factor final was held at the SSE Arena Wembley, global crewing specialists, Showforce were on-hand to support P-AV Productions, LarMac LIVE and PRG with delivering the popular ITV show.

P-AV Productions has been involved in the production of the X Factor, directly for Thames, since 2006. P-AV worked closely with PRG and LarMac LIVE to produce stand-out performances from Take That, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and One Direction, it was a massive production and visually spectacular watched by 10,000 people in the arena and a television audience of 9.1m.

Nearly 100 crew were onsite from 3-17 December, assisting with the install, show days and de-rig. During the install the crew were split into six teams; site, set, lighting, power, rigging and PA. Those based around the site were responsible for unloading trucks, setting up the stage and erecting scaffolding tower

UAE - Nicolas Kyvernitis Electronics Enterprises (NMK) has supplied Sound on Stage with a Midas console PRO2.

Sound on stage first launched its operations in Lebanon and in 2002 the company established its sister company in Dubai. Sound on stage proved its expertise in conducting major events in Dubai and the Middle East.

"After several years of using Midas consoles, starting from Venice 320 to Legend 3000 and H3000, we purchased PRO6 in 2009 which was later upgraded to PRO9. In order to complete our system we decided to purchase PRO2 console which can do monitor control and is the best to use in medium events because it can give a very high amount of inputs and outputs," commented Rawad Saad, owner of Sound on Stage.

(Jim Evans)

UK - In December, indie rock luminaries Bombay Bicycle Club became the very last band to play London's Earl's Court venue, which is soon to be demolished. The band took to the stage as part of an epic world tour, which not only highlighted the success of their So Long, See You Tomorrow album but also allowed them to use DPA Microphones extensively on the road for the first time.

If delivering the last-ever gig at Earl's Court wasn't enough of an honour, Bombay Bicycle Club also happily accepted a special guest when Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour joined them on stage. Gilmour first played steel lap guitar on the band's song Rinse Me Down, before giving an emotional rendition of Wish You Were Here, backed by Bombay Bicycle Club. As with all of the performances that night - and during the entire tour - DPA microphones were on-hand to ensure audio quality.

"Jo

USA - Over a year ago, Trinity Fellowship Church (TFC) mega-church ministry based in Amarillo, TX first installed the BlackTrax realtime motion tracking solution from CAST BlackTrax As part of the festive season, TFC presented an illustrated three-week sermon series called Who Is This Jesus?.

BlackTrax is part of TFC's lighting, sound and video system for its 3,800-seat auditorium set up as a theatre in the round.

BlackTrax realtime motion tracking solution was installed in August 2013 and has consistently been used a number of times each week ever since.

"It definitely solved a lot of problems for me over the year we've been using it. As soon as BlackTrax was installed and I was able to control the iris and beam to a specific width no matter where the light tracked. The options of what we could accomplish suddenly became seemingly endless in terms of creating an

USA - Warren Haynes and friends took the stage for his 26th Christmas Jam, an event filled with amazing music for a great cause. Proceeds for this "one-of-a-kind, semi-structured marathon of music" benefit the Habitat for Humanity, and this year's lineup included Gov't Mule, Jason Isbell, The Hard Working Americans, The Revivalists and Bill Kreutzmann of the Grateful Dead's new band, Billy and the Kids.

This year marked the fifth year of Pulse Lighting's involvement with the event, with lighting designer Preston Hoffman working each year to create an even more sophisticated design, a feat enabled with Bandit Lites.

"The Xmas Jam is a very special show for me each year," said Hoffman. "The Christmas spirit is always in the air, and it is a time for me to help give back to families less fortunate than I am. Bandit Lites lends a hand each year by providin

UAE - Lunch and Learn Technology from Spain, organized by Work Pro together with Arthur Holm and LDA Audio Tech Pro, and in collaboration with Secartys, the Association for the internationalisation and innovation of Spanish companies, took place in Dubai on 15 December.

This innovative concept aimed to offer attendees a training day in which to inform them about the latest trends and developments in the sector, as well as the solutions that these three manufacturers have developed and made available for the professionals in the AV and integration sectors.

The warm reception of the event made clear the existing interest in this innovative 'Lunch and Learn' concept. With the main objective that everyone interested in the event could attend the meeting from other countries close to Dubai and take advantage of the day, the event started at lunch time during which, simultane

UK - Woodworm Studios was established over 30 years ago as the private recording studio of folk legends Fairport Convention, a battered sign at the entrance still welcomes you to 'the Woodworm Hilton', the original name of the studio.

Situated in a converted chapel in the heart of the beautiful Oxfordshire Cotswolds, it was bought by recording engineer Stuart Jones in 2012 and renovated to high standards, and is now based around a Pro Tools HD system, a 24-channel Solid State Duality SE console and a surround array of PMC TB2S-A MkII speakers, with a pair of MB2 XBD-As serving as the main stereo reference monitors.

"I've had the TB2s for a while and have always been a PMC fan, hence the surround array," explains Jones. "I needed some high-quality large-scale reference monitors for Woodworm when I finished the renovations, but the nature of the room doesn't lend

France - Live sound engineer Verlaine Levis used to think that DPA microphones were only suited to classical music and never imagined that their microphones were also appropriate for pop rock tours. Since using a selection of DPA mics on the current Cats On Trees tour, Levis is the first to admit that his initial perception was entirely wrong.

"When DPA's French distributor Audio² gave me the opportunity to try the company's microphones with Cats On Trees, I was happy to accept the challenge," Levis says. "It didn't take long to discover that these great microphones have beefy pickups and are perfectly suited to rock and pop acts. We're now using three d:facto Vocal Microphones, as well as a d:dicate ST2011C Stereo Pair with 2011C Compact Cardioids and a number of d:vote 4099 Instrument Microphones for drums and violins."

"The tour is awesome and they

The Netherlands - Opened in 2005, Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan't IJ is the Netherlands foremost venue for contemporary classical music. For the past nine years, the audio mixing requirements have been reliably taken care of by a Yamaha DM2000, but a recent technical refurbishment has seen it joined by a CL3 system.

Physically, Muziekgebouw aan't IJ's main auditorium, the Grote Zaal, is exceptionally flexible, featuring a ceiling, walls, floor and seating which are all moveable. These features make it an equally space for everything from intimate chamber music to full orchestras.

Acoustically the auditorium is extremely quiet so, when funding became available to upgrade the audio system, the venue's technical team needed a mixing system that was virtually silent in operation, as well as fulfilling all the technical requirements.

"At the beginning, we wrote down a list of

Finland - Finnish rapper Cheek recently made part of pop music history with a sold out show at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. To ensure the show packed a huge punch, Eero Helle and Mikko Linnavuori from visual design company Visual45 chose an array of Clay Paky fixtures to add power and reliability to their bold design.

Cheek enlisted Visual45 to create the entire show design, including staging, video content and lighting, after the company designed two of the rapper's sold-out shows back in 2013 at the nearly 8000-capacity Ice Hall in Helsinki.

"After the Ice Hall shows, the artist was really impressed with our work so got us on board for the fantastic Olympic Stadium concert," says Helle. "Our brief was to create something completely exciting and never-seen-before for the artist, so working closely with him we specified the Sharpy, Alpha Beam 1500 and Alpha

Turkey - HK Audio will increase its presence in Turkey significantly in 2015, after the German sound reinforcement firm signed an exclusive distribution deal with Yildirim Muzikhal.

The experienced Antalya-based distributor will be taking on the entire HK Audio product line-up - including the pro sound, install sound and MI ranges - in what is one of Europe's largest and fastest-growing pro audio markets from 1 January.

The relationship between the two companies began after HK Audio decided to make a strategic change of distributor in Turkey, and talks intensified when the two firms realized the vast opportunities working together could bring.

Florian Kunz, HK Audio's international market manager, said, "The decision to work together with Yildirim Muzikhal was taken after a comprehensive meeting in Antalya. Our future distribution partner has an outstanding history of p

USA - Symphony Centre, in Chicago's Loop district, is home to the Grammy Award-winning Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and historic Orchestra Hall. Although the CSO traditionally performs acoustically, when visiting jazz and pop artists stop by for shows using amplified music, the venue now has a new secret weapon - DiGiCo's SD9.

Installed by The Sound Co-Op LLC, the same sound reinforcement company that also provides Symphony Centre's sound system for amplified performances, the SD9 is called into service when visiting artists perform both with and without the CSO, such as on a recent show by Washington, D.C.-based a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Symphony Centre's new SD9 console includes the Rack Pack Tour (RPT) package. This combination boasts 72 mic/line inputs (64 being on stage), digital snakes, redundant power supplies (in both console and stage racks), 48 Fl

USA - How do you add extra bam to one of the hottest A-List after parties during the ultra-hip internationally acclaimed Art Basel art show? At Mansion Nightclub, the answer was obvious, sometimes blindingly so, as 38 Nexus 4x4 Panels from Chauvet Professional created a searing and intense design at the VH1 + Scope party.

"Lighting designer Joe Paradise and the VH1 Production team created an awesome design that took full advantage of the Nexus panel's intensity," said Jorge Tellez, who was lighting director for the Mansion/Opium Group at the time of the party. "The panels were positioned to create a three-dimensional effect using Mansion's current LED system. They were rigged in three different positions, on the stage, front stage truss and main room truss. The arrangement provided a very nice depth illusion and an interesting lighting effect. The panels were also

USA - A collection of roughly 175 COLORado 1-Quad Tour par-style LED fixtures from Chauvet Professional provided by Barbizon Lighting Company were used to help illuminate and enhance the more than one million lights at Busch Gardens Tampa's Christmas Town.

Most of the fixtures provided external lighting for the attraction's impressive 50' tall tree.

(Jim Evans)

USA - The Sheraton Houston Brookhollow Hotel is an all-purpose hotel that recently refreshed its meeting and banquet rooms with a dynamic lighting scheme that includes decorative colour looks from Elation LED Flex Tape, a high-output yet energy-efficient solution.

As with many hotels that keep a close eye on overhead costs, energy savings was at the forefront of the new design but because the hotel specializes in wedding receptions and cultural weddings, system designers Louis Kong Architects sought a product that offered more than just the typical ambient lighting.

Jay Cid of Elation rep firm PSLP (Professional Sound and Lighting Products) introduced Louis Kong Architects to Elation Flex LED Tape, thin and flexible RGB LED tape with 40mm centres that can be cut to any length and easily installed no matter the size or shape of the space. After Jay provided on site demos, Louis

UK - London-based large format projection specialist, The Projection Studio (TPS) created a stunning festive projection onto the central tower at Windsor Castle, which was enjoyed by all residents and visitors to the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, Berkshire, over Christmas 2014.

Ross Ashton and his Projection Studio team were approached by Windsor's Town Centre manager Paul Roach after the success of Ashton's works commissioned by LOCOG for the London 2012 Olympic Games, which saw the same tower on Thames Street illuminated, together with two others, a display that attracted over 85,000 visitors to the city centre.

Aston, who has also projected multiple times onto Buckingham Palace as well as numerous other structures and buildings worldwide, was delighted to be involved in the project. "It was an excellent piece to create in terms of imagination and style, it is

Norway - W-DMX by Wireless Solution Sweden AB recently joined legendary Norwegian alternative rock band Seigmen on stage for a three-day show in Tønsberg, Norway, lit with an impressive rig designed by lighting designer Petter Nilssen.

In total, five universes were run via W-DMX by Wireless Solution. Nilssen used W-DMX F-2500 G4 and three W-DMX BlackBox F-1 G4 MK2 units with 16 W-DMX Micro R-512 G4 receivers spread across 4 truss sections and the floor. The concert received "fantastic" reviews both in Norway and abroad.

Nilssen explained, "The reason for choosing W-DMX was to be able to not have several universes sent through the audience with cables, and to really test W-DMX in different situations. I used 5 DMX universes all sent wirelessly. The possibility to easily change the design without having to deal with a lot of cables that needed to change was

USA - The interactive Beatles tribute show, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Y3), made its New York appearance at 42West, a venue that served as a mid-town Manhattan parking garage, before being transformed into one of the city's hippest nightspots.

The low ceilings of the former parking structure created a special challenge when it came to lighting the group's performance. Lighting designer Ben Danielowski met this challenge in impressive fashion by utilising the zoomable prism on Legend 230SR Beam from Chauvet Professional.

"The club is a fantastic venue that's very popular in New York," said the LD. "However, as a former parking structure it does present some challenges when you're trying to light a rock show. With 12'-14' ceilings, and large support beams blocking most of my first choices of angles, it was difficult to get many of the great clean shots I was able to

Canada - Elation Professional's new SixPar LED multi-chip PAR colour changers are being used to colour several areas of Foresta Lumina, an illuminated night trail through the forest in Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook, a top tourist attraction near Quebec.

Wanting to attract a larger and more diverse group of evening visitors, the park commissioned media and entertainment studio Moment Factory to create a multimedia experience in the natural forest setting. Moment Factory's creative team took inspiration from the legendary characters found in folk tales from Quebec and around the world.

After dark, visitors explore the park's charms at their own pace, experiencing a scenography featuring lighting effects and video mapping accompanied by an original soundtrack. All along the 2 km 'garden of wishes' trail visitors meet fascinating beings that lead them into a fully immersive advent

Malta - Over 200 Clay Paky fixtures including the popular A.leda and Super Sharpy recently provided exciting lighting effects for the 2014 Junior Eurovision Song Contest held in Malta. Lighting director Nick Malbon and creative director John McCullagh specified the setup with stunning results.

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest (JESC) is an international song competition first organized in 2003 by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The competition has many similarities to the wildly popular Eurovision Song Contest from which its name is taken. Each participating broadcaster sends an act, the members of which are aged between 10 and 15 years old. They must perform an original song to compete against the other entries. Viewers from the participating countries are invited to vote for their favourite performances by televoting and there is also a jury from each participating cou

UK - On a street that boasts the most famous front door in the world, it's fitting that the Downing Street Christmas tree is a vision to behold. Over the holiday period, the tree outside Number 10 appeared countless times on television news reports. So when Future Group Lighting Design was asked to do something a little out of the ordinary to coincide with the International Year of Light, Doughty Engineering was brought on board to provide some expert advice.

Peter Phillipson, award winning lighting designer and Principal at FGLD explained "Back in August we were asked to design something special for the Downing Street tree that signified the International Year of Light without looking like a corporate sponsorship. We considered many types of projection but went for backlit motifs resembling baubles in order that it could be left unmanned."

Turning to artist friend I

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