Walker’s first calls were to Edwin Shirley Staging, who agreed to provide their lozenge-shaped Orbit stage - with the dome at each end - and to Chris Beale at SSE Hire, whose provision of the Out Board TiMax sound spatialising system had been one of the highlights of the event. He also contacted Simon Whittaker at Stage One Creative Services - who will again be providing their Q-Motion system to track the 15mm and 25mm Screenco modules on vertical excursions and spinning rotations - and technical director Adam Wildi. Both instantly pledged their support. Peripheral AV equipment will be provided by Screenco’s sister company, Creative Technology, who will supply plasma screens, Electrosonic Vector image processing and Doremi digital video disk recorders.
The PLASA event will also feature brand new products such as Catalyst, the WWG-designed projection attachment from High End Systems, and described as the ‘holy grail’ for lighting designers. The Top Deck presentations - which will alternate between Ambient and Band sets on the hour - will see Catalyst attached to a high-output Barco G10 projector. Catalyst alone will stretch the imagination of lighting operators Nick Jevons (Super Furry Animals and Reef), and Habs Akram, whose creative input at Three Mills Island was key to its success. One of the more electrifying pastiches is likely to be the virtual surround processing characteristics of TiMax zig-zagging through space in sync with Jevons’ use of fast-graphics triggering.
