UAE - Protec was delighted to support its client, SNAP, with lighting, video and rigging for the Games15 Middle East event, held at Dubai International Marine Club from 10-12 September 2015.

The premier gaming event in the region, hosted by ESL, saw more than 20,000 eager gaming fans brave soaring temperatures to watch global teams from ESL go head-to-head over three days, competing for the US$250,000 prize.

The Main Arena was rigged using Protec's EHD (extra heavy duty) ground support structure which held three LED screens rigged off the 18" sub-truss. The stage was considerably smaller than the arena shows that ESL regularly produces, so Protec took the challenge of making the stage look like an arena show for TV without the space of an arena. Protec's project manager Simon Travis explained: "The main issue was the width of the Main Arena rig. We had to make it sma

UK - System integrators Pure Audio Visual has been achieving increasing success with Martin Audio's discreet OmniLine micro array systems in university lecture and room multi-purpose facilities as its reputation spreads.

Pure AV systems specialist Colin Hasted has helped this award-winning system open up a vibrant new channel for a product that has traditionally been more prevalent in the HoW sector.

"Since receiving budget approvals, universities in the north west, in particular, have gone for this in a big way - adopting OmniLine through example," he says. "OmniLine has proved ideal for awkward, multi-purpose spaces with difficult acoustics, where a discreet solution is required. As a result, we have OmniLine in well over half of the north-west universities and all the Liverpool universities - with more to come.

"This solution stresses the importance of

The Netherlands - At the sold-out STRAF_WERK Festival, four Meyer Sound systems helped transform Amsterdam's Sportpark Riekerhaven into a playground for electronic music fans. Led by a Lyon linear sound reinforcement system, the systems were provided by Generations Light & Sound of 's-Gravenzande, the Netherlands.

"We heard several new systems through the course of last year, and the one that blew us away was Lyon," says Chris van Meer of Amsterdam-based Apenkooi, Inc., the music events company that produced STRAF_WERK. "For a dance music event organizer, sound is a critical element. We need a partner that we can depend on for consistent quality, and for us that partner has been Generations."

This is the second consecutive year that Generations has provided Lyon for STRAF_WERK. "When we first used the Lyonss last year the results were fantastic,"

UK - PAI has delivered an immersive audio-visual scheme at Nickleodeon's European flagship at 1 Leicester Square, London.

Positioned in the heart of one of the world's prime retail and tourism destinations, the store offers a platform to showcase the global entertainment brand and its internationally-recognised characters.

Appointed by SmartDesign Group, the South Wales-based systems integrator was tasked with installing an array of AV, sound, lighting, multimedia and interactive elements throughout the multi-level space.

The flagship is the UK's first following a new partnership between Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products and Entertainment Retail Enterprises. It boasts more than 40 digital displays, a range of short throw and glass projection, touchscreen technology and audio equipment.

Upon approaching the store eyes will be drawn to the striking landscape video wall be

UK - Each year, education organisation PiXL holds an awards ceremony that celebrates the significant achievements of students from all across the UK. This year, PiXL's Celebrating Success took place on 23 September at Central Hall Westminster. As production service partner at the historic venue, White Light provided the lighting, audio and video production support to help create what was a spectacular celebration.

PiXL provides over 1,500 schools with access to vibrant, purposeful conferences and networks of people, alongside resources, training schemes and development programmes. The organisation also gives opportunities and support to all young people, regardless of their background or ability, in order for them to achieve their potential - something which was highlighted at this year's Celebrating Success event.

The awards were presented by food-entrepreneur Levi Roots, whi

Germany - As part of Shure's strategic focus on providing innovative solutions in the A/V Conferencing and Integration market, the company has partnered with Polycom. Shure is working with Polycom SoundStructure, HDX, Group Series, and Vortex Solutions to connect wireless microphones to Polycom audio and video conferencing equipment.

Because Shure has satisfied Polycom's extensive interoperability requirements, it can brand Microflex Wireless as Polycom Ready. Polycom Ready solutions, including end-user devices, network devices, and software applications, are tested for interoperability with Polycom products and applications. When customers see solutions bearing the Polycom Ready badge, they know they've been proven to work with the world's leading open standards-based UC&C platform.

"We are very proud that the Microflex Wireless System has earned the Polycom Ready design

Hungary - Although the northern Hungarian town of Tokaj and the surrounding district are internationally famous for their wine production, the area has recently hit the headlines with a truly spectacular open-air performance venue featuring an Outline audio system.

The dramatically beautiful setting of a stone quarry which has as its backdrop a 1,300ft high mountain was recently transformed into a 2,500 capacity open-air theatre hosting a wide variety of events by Istvàn Dévald, director of the Tokaj Amphitheatre.

To equip the venue, Dévald called in Budapest-based ZAJ Show Lighting, whose CEO and founder Tamas Fazekas designed audio and lighting set-ups worthy of the unique location.

Fazekas's brief for the audio system was to ensure it reached the 2,500 capacity audience comfortably, designing an audio system able to ensure optimum sound reinforcement, cover

Chile - Clay Paky Mythos fixtures illuminated the Costanera Tower in Santiago, the highest skyscraper in Latin America, with a light show to celebrate each match in the Copa América 2015 football tournament.

The award-winning Clay Paky fixtures were part of a lighting design by Toni Amoros, who also lit the tournament's opening ceremony. Each time a player scored Amoros employed the Mythos to wash the building with the team's colours and a variety of textures, surprising and delighting onlookers.

The fixtures also projected custom gobos such as the word 'GOOOL' (GOAAAL), supplied by Iluminación Profesional VALOOK, up the entire 300m length of the tower.

"The Mythos was the perfect tool for this ambitious project," says Fabian Cortez Lopez of VALOOK. "Its incredible optics meant it could illuminate the whole building with ease. The custom gobos were pro

UK - Blackburn- based lighting and visuals rental company HSL underlines its commitment to providing full video production and touring packages to its clients by announcing a strategic working partnership with live event video designers and specialists, Video Illusions.

Based in Canterbury, Kent, Video Illusions was formed in 2006 by brothers Dave and Nick Whiteoak and has rapidly built a reputation for imaginative and innovative video solutions - from hardware to content creation - for all sectors of the entertainment industry encompassing live music, touring, theatre productions, special events, corporates, sports competitions and more.

Prior to this, Dave and Nick started their industry careers as freelancers working in the world of corporate AV on high profile events which constantly opened doors to new and interesting projects. Simultaneously, they were honing their live

The Netherlands - Dutch Rock band Di-Rect from The Hague celebrated their 15th anniversary in great style with a special concert on the beach at Scheveningen in front of 12,500 enthusiastic fans. The beach is one of the most visited public spaces in the Netherlands and is renowned its vibrant ambience.

Lighting designer Nick van Balen ensured that the spectacular lightshow fitted the sense of achievement after 15 years at the sharp end of the music business, and as a confirmed Robe advocate, included 99 x Robe fixtures on his rig - 46 x LEDWash 300s, 44 x Pointes and nine PATT 2013s - a vintage style fixture designed by Tim Routledge, and now being manufactured by Robe.

Nick had an open brief for the show, and the main objective was to make it look awesome - which of course he did with a good deal of finesse, attention to detail and some magic touches to ensure that a great ni

Italy / Germany - Proel has appointed Mega Audio GmbH as distributor for its Axiom loudspeaker brand and Sagitter lighting brand for Germany.

Centrally located in Waldlaubersheim, less than an hour from Frankfurt, Mega Audio distributes many professional audio brands including SSL, DPA, Ampeg, SE Electronics, and Fostex.

"I am very happy to announce that we reached an exclusive distribution agreement with Mega Audio," stated Pietro Guercioni, Proel's director of international sales. "Proel and Mega Audio have the same vision of the market, and we are very excited about this new challenge. I am sure that together we can establish a strong and long term business for the Axiom Pro Audio and Sagitter Lighting brands. Mega Audio is an established and very well known company, and the right partner for us."

"I am proud to confirm that Mega Audio has signed

Ireland - The Gaiety Theatre on Dublin's South King Street is the city's longest established theatre in continuous operation. Since November 1871 and the opening night's double bill of She Stoops to Conquer and the burlesque tunes of La Belle Sauvage, the Gaiety has been entertaining Dublin audiences with a mix of musical shows, opera, ballet, dance and drama. In more recent times, it hosted the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest, a venue in distinct contrast to the mass arena productions of today. Since the millennium, the owners have invested over €7m in the refurbishment and updating of this sumptuous theatre.

In 2013, d&b audiotechnik partner, MOSCO, provided a pro audio installation of Q-Series and E-Series loudspeakers to the venue. It proved a resounding success across all entertainment genres, particularly from Riverdance, having employed the Q-Series for

Singapore - St. Andrew's Cathedral recently installed two Allen & Heath's Qu-32 compact digital mixers at FOH in its two main worship halls, replacing the existing analogue mixers.

Located within Singapore's Central Business District, the Cathedral was consecrated in 1862 and declared a national monument in 1973. As a major place of worship, St Andrew's Cathedral faces the challenge of hosting a number of different services, with a variety of musical requirements, and quick changeovers between events. The installation of 32in/24out Qu-32 digital mixers in the traditional worship hall at the Main Building and the contemporary worship space at the Extension building, has provided a solution.

"The Cathedral has many services running back to back especially on Sundays from as early as 6.30am. With the previous analogue mixer, a 'reset' was needed during service changeovers. T

UK - For the second year running Matrix provided a full service solution to Clearscape Communications for Attitude Awards 2015. This included all production management, sound, set, projection and backline equipment.

Scissor Sisters lead singer Ana Matronic hosted the awards ceremony, an honour she enjoyed for a second consecutive year. Each award was presented by one of the many famous faces present, many of whom successfully won an award in their category including Yoko Ono, Vivien Westwood, Lorraine Kelly, Anthony Cotton and Holly Johnson.

Three hundred guests enjoyed a champagne reception, followed by a formal dinner, awards and performances by artists Adam Lambert and VV Brown. After the ceremony guests enjoyed the after party with DJ James Barr from Capital Radio.

Annie Bracken from Clearscape Communications comments, "Glitz and glomour, the Attitude Awards ran per

UK - Rosco, a major manufacturer of products for the entertainment industry, has once again shown its support for the new charity Behind the Scenes UK by donating the year's proceeds from sales of Rosco 313 Light Relief yellow.Mark Engel, CEO of Rosco, stated, "Our industry is constantly changing. Designers and technicians move from show to show, and technology advances by the moment. Ours is not a community that sits still. In such an environment, stability is critical. Knowing you have a safety net, that your friends are there for you, is essential. Behind the Scenes UK is that safety net, and we are so pleased to be able to help fill that net year after year. This year's contribution, thanks to every designer and technician who used Rosco 313 Light Rlief Yellow, is £1,398.51."Upon receiving the cheque presented by Cristian Arroyo, director of sales for Rosco EMEA, John

UK - Sheffield metal titans Bring Me The Horizon have chosen Shure's flagship Axient wireless system and PSM1000 in-ear monitors for their latest tour.

Jared Daly signed on mid tour in 2014 to help fill the monitor engineer position and has exposed the band to the benefits of Shure's PSM1000 IEMs, AXT600 spectrum manager and the AXT200 wireless vocal mic. With input from each of the band, he has subsequently upgraded their in-ear monitoring and helped them to use Shure wireless technology more extensively throughout 2015.

"The band have always used in-ears; they all have very specific mix requirements, including click tracks and cues," explains Daly, who is currently in the USA with the group on tour. "The band and crew have been using Shure PSM900 units for a few years on stage; they owned those when I joined.

"Oli always used wedges for monitoring on-st

USA - A maintenance revision to AES67-2013 - the AES standard for high-performance streaming audio-over-IP interoperability - has been issued. The revision, called AES67-2015, clarifies some of the interoperability requirements, based on general implementation and 'plugfest' experience.

The possibility to incorporate these revisions was identified during the AES 'Plugfest' 1 testing, carried out in cooperation with the European Broadcast Union (EBU), in October last year, and held at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT), in Munich, Germany. During these tests ten companies tested 16 currently available networked-audio products with AES67-specific extensions against each other to confirm interoperability.

The participating manufacturers were ALC NetworX GmbH, Archwave AG, Axia Audio, Digigram SA, DirectOut GmbH, Georg Neumann GmbH, Lawo AG, Merging Technologies S.A., SOUND4

USA - Electric Zoo is New York City's premier electronic music festival, attracting over 100,000 fans to Randall's Island Park each Labour Day Weekend. This year, the festival's Main Stage featured a spectacular phoenix-themed design outfitted with Elation Professional lighting gear, including Lumina Strips, Cuepix Blinder WW2s and the debut of the new Elation ACL 360 Bar, all supplied by Burst Sound & Lighting Systems of Detroit.

Now in its seventh year, Electric Zoo was revamped this year in an immersive zoo-themed atmosphere that included bigger stages, brighter lights and an overall recharged production. Their first year doing the festival, Burst provided lighting and rigging for all five stages, a 15 truck pull that included some 2000 moving lights and over 2000 feet of truss.

A highlight of the event and one of the animal-themed aesthetics that raised the bar at this yea

UK - Clay Paky's beam light, the Sharpy, has proved the ideal festival lighting tool on The Great Stage at Secret Garden Party (SGP), one of the UK's most popular independent arts and music festivals.

This year's SGP saw over 30,000 revellers hit Mill Hill Field in Cambridgeshire for a long weekend of festivities ranging from performances by big name music acts such as Angus and Julia Stone to theatre workshops and boat rides.

London-based event supplier Colour Sound Experiment was responsible for kitting out the festival with "the perfect technical package", under the direction of Jonathan Ricketts, head of lighting for SGP's production team, The Dark Horses.

Choosing 18 of the award-winning Clay Paky fixture, Ricketts knew the Sharpys would be suitable for the numerous designers making use of the main stage's rig over the four days.

"The Sharpys were put o

USA - On 25 September, ANSI's Board of Standards Review approved the reaffirmation of the 2010 edition of ANSI E1.30-4, EPI 26, Device Description Language (DDL) Extensions for DMX512 and E1.31 Devices, and the revised version of ANSI E1.37-2, Entertainment Technology - Additional Message Sets for ANSI E1.20 (RDM) - Part 2, IPv4 & DNS Configuration Messages. ANSI E1.30-4 does what the title says: it defines protocol-specific extensions to the Device Description Language for describing DMX512 devices. ANSI E1.37-2 is another part of the multi-part, open-ended E1.37 standard. It provides Get/Set parameter messages for configuring network interfaces, routing information, and DNS settings on devices with IPv4 addresses.

Both standards are now published. They may be downloaded at no charge from http://tsp.plasa.org/freestandards; the free download is sponsored by Prosight Specialty I

Italy - Francesco De Gregori has appointed lighting designer Andrea Coppini to design the lighting at his concerts for several years now. In recent years, Coppini has often relied on Clay Paky equipment.

How did Andrea get to know De Gregori? "I have been working with Agorà for more than ten years. I met De Gregori in the summer of 2008, when I stood in for his previous lighting operator, who was no longer available. From that moment on, I started working continuously with the artist and the production team. This means I present new designs whenever a new tour starts. I have been designing the lighting for De Gregori for six years.

"I have grown together with Francesco. In the early years, Francesco had a minimalist idea of show aesthetics: he preferred a plain stage, with no particular special or lighting effects. Over time he developed the idea that stage design a

USA - Bandit Lites is supporting lighting design firm Pulse Lighting in supplying lights for Grace Potter. The multi-instrumentalist powerhouse is currently touring the country with songs her from her newest album, Midnight.

Pulse Lighting specializes in designing rigs that provide big looks with the most bang for a buck and a small trailer footprint. Lighting designer Preston Hoffman redesigned Potter's summer floor package with 12 GLP X4s for a compact wash that double as a beam when focused tightly, eight Robe Pointes for versatile graphic and textural looks, and 12 Cuepix Blinders.

Four towers of truss each features three X4s, two Pointes and two Cuepix Blinders, giving Hoffman the opportunity to build large looks both behind and through the band.

"Grace conveyed to me that she was looking for a highly versatile rig that can provide lots of different feels, a

Belgium - Creative lighting, video and visual design specialist Painting with Light brought their imagination and flair to six special live recordings of popular Belgian comedy / impressionist TV show Tegen de Sterren Op, designing the set, lighting and visuals for producers Studio 100 and DEDS IT. To be broadcast on VTM, the action took place over three days at the 6000 capacity Lotto Arena in Antwerp.

The Painting with Light team was led by Luc Peumans, who has also designed set and lighting for the most recent series of Tegen de Sterren Op studio based shows.

Wanting to replicate key visual elements from the TV show, but enlarged to capture the scale of the arena sized production, the design featured a striking LED screen portal / pros arch measuring 8m high by 16m wide.

Upstage was a 9m high by 18m wide LED screen made up of two sections which tracked apart

USA - Robe underlines the importance of the American market by announcing a major new product launch at the 2015 LDI expo in Las Vegas - the BMFL Wash and BMFL Wash XF (Extra Features).

There will also be a host of other exciting new products making their US debut at Booth 2521 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre 23-25 October.

BMFL Wash and BMFL Wash XF are the ultimate 1700W lamp based wash lights, and the latest fixtures to be added to Robe's 'game-changing' BMFL range of luminaires. These are powerful workhorse wash lights, packed with innovative and creative features.

A large 200 mm diameter front fresnel lens provides a high quality traditional wash output ranging from a punchy and tight 4.5° to a super-smooth 55°.

Custom interchangeable frost filters offer three grades - light, medium and heavy - giving an extremely subtle and natural 'soft touch'.

Both CMY

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