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South Africa - Six dnp Supernova screens have been specified in the UCKG Park Station Cathedral in Johannesburg to provide all 7,000 members of the congregation with a clear view of the service.

A full 12,000 people were able to follow the building's inauguration ceremony recently, thanks to the high-quality live images on the screens.

While the building was still at the planning stage, the UCKG church asked Questek Customer Care (QCC) to supply the audio-visual installation for their new cathedral. QCC's task was to create a set-up which would afford all congregation members a good view of the preacher's face - no matter where they were sitting. Since most services are held during the daytime, a further challenge was to project quality images in ambient light.

QCC chose dnp's Supernova Screens primarily because of their ability to provide quality images in high ambient ligh

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France - City Rock, a lounge bar/restaurant in the Parisian suburb of Cergy Pontoise, is the latest nightspot to benefit from an APG sound system powered by Lab.gruppen's C Series amplifiers.

The system was designed and specified by Pierre Yves Seddiki of AMPI, a systems contracting company based just south of Paris. He designed a multi-zone distributed system based on APG's dedicated installation Micro Axial Series.

City Rock comprises three distinct zones, each of which required its own sound system to suit the particular environment. The first zone is designed like a high class, luxurious New York loft with decor to match. Here the emphasis is on creating a calm and tranquil atmosphere for customers to dine in comfort. AMPI therefore specified a total of eight MX1 loudspeakers which offer a broad dispersion pattern in a compact format. An MX2, which is slightly more powerfu

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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Ateis UK is playing a major part in the expansion and refurbishment of ExCel London, a leading European exhibition and conference centre. As part of this important project Ateis is supplying audio processing and control technology for the public address (PA) and voice alarm (VA) systems used around the rooms and halls.

ExCel opened in Docklands in 2000, attracting international conferences and exhibitions due to its proximity to the City of London and rail and Underground links to the West End, with London City Airport not far away. After nearly ten years in the competitive venues market ExCel's owners decided to redevelop the original building and add more halls and rooms.

PA and VA systems are necessary in both areas, so Ateis UK was involved by Notifier by Honeywell and their customer installation company Unysystems to supply equipment and advice. Phase One of the project was comp

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UK - On 15 September 2008, capitalism came to a grinding halt. As sub-prime mortgages and toxic securities continued to dominate the headlines, in spring 2009, London's National Theatre asked David Hare to write an urgent and immediate work that sought to find out what had happened and why. Helping to illustrate his story was G-LEC Phantom 30. A 17m by 3m tall screen flown in and out using four chain hoists showed video, original computer graphics, green screen images, text and still photographs.

Al Parkinson, the production manager for The Power of Yes, explains, "We knew that we wanted to make this show look as high tech as possible and while we'd used projection before, we'd never used LED screens. We used the internet to research a number of companies' products and then invited them to demonstrate them.

"During the show, some of the time, the screens were

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UK - The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) has suspended a member of staff after it emerged that he was using a false name.

As reported in the Scottish News of the World on 7 February, the lecturer, who for six months had gone by the name 'Simon Cadell', was in fact Simon Brophy, the former head of lighting at the Millennium Dome who was jailed for four-and-a-half years in 2005 after being convicted of a £4m fraud at the Dome.

The deception apparently came to light following allegations that Cadell had had a relationship with a student. He was immediately suspended by the Academy.

Last year, "Simon Cadell" was mentioned in RSAMD press releases as part of its lecturing team that had been named "the best in the world" by OISTAT at the World Stage Design Exhibition & Conference 2009, in Korea. As of this morning, "Simon Cade

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Sound in the Round - The Human League, Gary Numan and Grace Jones will all play special shows at a new temporary venue, the 5DX dome, in Miami and London in March and April. The venue will offer "3D Surround Sound and 360-degree visuals as well as dining facilities, with five-course meals for guests". Gary Numan is quoted as describing the experience as "The entertainment equivalent of walking into a laptop - the audience are immersed in a 360 degree digital environment unlike any experience known before."

Back to The Eighties - Blondie will play an outdoor show in the UK as part of The Forestry Commission's annual series of outdoor concerts. The show, at the Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire will take place on 20 June. Happy Mondays will headline the Saturday night of this year's Wychwood Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse on 5 June.

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Jordan - Under the banner, Party line never before, R&B singer-songwriter Akon performed live in concert at Amman Exhibitions Park with lighting courtesy of TriTec AV and Clay Paky. The show was hosted by The Arabian Journal, organized by Young Modes and powered by Creative Plus. Special guest Melissa opened the concert.

TriTec AV of Amman provided the lighting and sound setup for the event. Among the arsenal of gear used for the show were 34 Clay Paky Alpha Wash 575, 24 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200 HPE, and 16 Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500 fixtures, all controlled with a grandMA Full Size console.

TriTec senior production manager Rajai Khalil explained, "For the Akon show we used almost the same amount of Clay Paky fixtures as in Distant Heat (the summer dance party held in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan). We didn't have many technical details or even a ligh

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USA - The Rose Bowl in Pasadena hosted the year's most anticipated college football game - the BCS Championship game - as well as the Rose Bowl. For each game, nearly 95,000 college football fans in attendance looked to the new Lighthouse LED screen for game action replays, sponsor messages and entertainment.

The BCS Championship game on 7 January, pitted the two top-rated, undefeated teams in America, the Alabama Crimson Tide versus the Texas Longhorns. And though the historic Rose Bowl's sheer size prevents it from being considered an intimate venue, the stadium's new Lighthouse LED screen delivers a video experience to each fan that feels like watching high-definition television in the family room with 95,000 of your closest friends.

"Lighthouse is honoured to be such an integral part of the Rose Bowl," said Ed Whitaker, Lighthouse N.A.S.A director of sales. "

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USA / Australia - LSC's Clarity is the console of choice for lighting designer Dave Haus for the current Wolfmother New Moon Rising world tour.

Haus and his company Prodigy Lighting Design are based in Maryland USA. He is a lighting designer and programmer and owns a number of his own consoles. He came across Clarity last year whilst programming a live TV broadcast in Colorado, USA where Clarity was part of the house rig.

"I found it to be very intuitive and easy to programme," comments Haus. "So much so that after the gig I immediately contacted the USA distributor Applied Electronics and purchased my very own VX20 Wing and software.

On arriving in the Europe with the Wolfmother tour, Clarity continued to be a real time saver for Haus when he was faced with combining their touring fixtures with the local house rigs.

He adds, "Clarity's easy pat

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Germany - Wireless Solution Sweden was recently in Berlin to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The four-day festival ran from November 5-9, 2009, with the highlight being the Festival of Freedom held at the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Thousands of guests attended the evening of 9 November to celebrate the fall of the wall 20 years ago.

The Berlin Staatskapelle and State Opera Chorus, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, opened the ceremony on the Pariser Platz. Potsdamer Platz, 18th of March Square and the Reichstag all held major events as well. Lighting designer was Gerd Helinski, managing director of Helicon-Media. After the concert, the fall of the Berlin Wall was symbolized with the toppling of a domino wall made up of over 1000 giant Styrofoam dominoes, stacked along the entire wall path. Following the symbolic 'fall', hundreds of thousand

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Kenya - Gearhouse South Africa supplied full technical production - sound, lighting, AV & video, staging, sets, rigging and power - and one of their massive new In2Structures SupaDome venues for Swedish cosmetics multinational Oriflame's 2010 Diamond Conference.

This was hosted at the Sarova Whitesands Hotel & Spa in Bamburi, near Mombasa on the Kenyan coast, and produced by Oriflame's in house production team.

The project, the site and the logistics were managed for Gearhouse by Bill Lawford and Eyal Yehezkely, working closely with account handler Gareth Hadden.

Forty four Gearhouse SA crew - designers, engineers and technicians - worked across all the disciplines, utilising 63 tonnes of production equipment that was air freighted out of SA via Nairobi in a 747 freighter. The SupaDome was transported to Mombasa in seven 40ft Hi-Cube sea freight containers.

The event compr

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UK - The doors for the ABTT Theatre Show at the Royal Horticultural Halls do not open until 16 June but already the organisers are facing the happy problem of ensuring there is enough space for new exhibitors as regulars book bigger stands and commit to additional sponsorship opportunities at the show, say the organisers.

The exhibition provides a forum for theatre technology and services. Last year it bucked the downturn caused by the financial crisis and presented the broadest range of products and companies in its 32-year history.

The Show also provides a platform for airing the big issues in the theatre and live performance sectors. Among the most challenging right now is the Digital Dividend Review and re-allocation of frequency spectrum following the switchover from analogue to digital television.

Theatre and live music shows rely heavily on wireless technologies, incl

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France - Following La Norma ski resort in the French Alps, the ski resort of Tignes has also entrusted Martin Professional with its lighting needs. Located at an altitude of over 2000 m, Vignes, together with nearby Val d'Isère, is internationally renowned for its quality slopes.

Initially, the town of Tignes sought to freshen up its image in order to better match its reputation as a young, dynamic resort. Lighting designer Jean-Philippe Corrigou therefore turned to Martin Professional visual solutions to bring about this dynamism through lighting.

The first project, the Maison de Tignes, is a large reception centre located just below the ski slopes. It enables guests to orientate themselves, obtain information and have fun, all while getting warm.

The architecture of the building, which is made completely out of wood, is simple and chalet-like and, due to its dimensions,

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Australia - The Brownlow Medal Count is the one of the most prestigious annual awards ceremony on the Australia sporting calendar. Staged at the Palladium Ballroom in Melbourne's Crown Casino complex, the 2009 Brownlow dinner was attended by over 1000 sporting celebrities and VIPs and broadcast live on Australia's Channel 7 TV. The Brownlow Medal is awarded to the 'fairest and best' player in the Australian Football League.

Clifton Productions supplied a large array of equipment to this year's event including Robe moving lights and Anolis LED fixtures which were used on stage and throughout the venue.

The event's art director was Mal Nichols of Mal Nichols and Associates. "The design elements had to be three-dimensional to allow lighting and texturing to be a back drop to the talent", says Nichols. "So the lighting was required to be flexible and allow for subtl

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China - The five-star Hua Sheng Jiang Quan Hotel, which opened recently in Linyi (in China's Shandong province), is the first venue in the country to take a WideLine 8 line array system from QSC Audio. The system was supplied by PCI, QSC's territorial distributors.

Owners, the Hua Sheng Jiang Quan Group, a Top 500 company in China, aspire to world-class standards from construction through to design, decoration - and all the technical equipment that forms the infrastructure.

The hotel incorporates in excess of 40 conference rooms of different sizes, with the multi-purpose function hall (measuring 4700m2) being the most important.

This line array system comprises 24 WL3082 full-range enclosures and eight WL212 subwoofers. It is driven by QSC's muscular PowerLight PL3 amplification, controlled by BASIS processing, using Intrinsic Correction technology. Field support was offered

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UK / Sweden - The first Avolites Pearl lighting control desk - model PRL001 - has been retired after more than 15 years of lighting various shows, conferences, concerts and fashion shows with Swedish rental company Fremlab.

Avolites were exhibiting their first Pearl desk at the PLASA Show in 1994, when Fremlab paid a visit to their stand. Managing director Carl-Fredrik Malmgren remembers: "I was visiting with a lighting designer, as we were looking for a new console when, after one hour, he approached me to say, 'I have found the new console, an Avolites!' I thought it was out of my price range, but then when I checked it out I got a very interesting quote."

Avolites representative Tony Shembish informed them they were the first to purchase on the opening day of PLASA, making their model PRL001.

Sadly, though, the desk has now seen its last gig with Fremlab. With l

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Georgia - The Ambassador Hotel in Tbilisi has selected Traxon Technologies' LED lighting systems to create an iridescent atmosphere for its hotel's exterior, emphasizing the characteristics of its architectural design. The intention of the lighting project was originally devised by Georgian President Saakasjvili, creating an eye-catching skyline around the presidential palace of Georgia. The Ambassador Hotel is located directly opposite the palace.

The entire lighting design concept is defined by lighting design company Gelania. The entire facade is illuminated with LED lighting - 66 sets of Traxon Outdoor RGB Dot Strings serve to highlight the building edges, making it change colour continuously.

The installation company Tbilisi City Hall states: "We are happy with the Dot String, It is flexible, and also the connection system made our job easier during the installation.

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Cape Verde Islands - Systems integrator IVC Media has announced it has been contracted to design and build a centralised AV, IT, resort security and access control management infrastructure using the latest fibre technology for the new luxury Tortuga Beach Resort & Spa in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa.

Owned by The Resort Group, Tortuga Beach Resort & Spa will consist of a variety of bars and restaurants, pools and relaxation areas, a beach club, gymnasium, shops, 52 villas, 306 apartments, 14 hotel suites and a Sol Meliá brand Yhi spa. The resort will be operated by Sol Meliá. The £1.1m IVC network will provide multiple services to the resort including fast internet access, multi-channel high definition TV capabilities, video on demand, telephony, fire detection, door entry systems and CCTV all controlled by a remotely monitored, centralised manage

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The Netherlands At ISE, Christie introduced its new MicroTiles - modular digital display tiles that can be stacked and clustered like building blocks to create display walls of any shape or scale, using an entirely new, advanced optical design that produces unparalleled levels of brightness, contrast and colour reproduction.

The Christie MicroTiles system represents a step forward in large-format display technology, offering "superior colour and image reproduction, the widest possible viewing angles, and a near absence of seams on display walls, with only a 1mm gap between the tiles," says the company.The groundbreaking LED- and DLP-based system is designed for long, reliable commercial use in public areas, with no lamps or other consumable parts to replace. The LED light engine, a key component of MicroTiles, is rated at 65,000 hours to half brightness usage, or nearl

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Russia - One of the world's favourite opera masterpieces, Aida is among the most popular works by Giuseppe Verdi. In October, Aida was performed in a very original form on the stage of the Moscow International House of Music (MMDM). It was accompanied by unique large-scale projections created by 360Project Company. The installation included two Christie Roadster S+20K and two Christie HD10K-M projectors, alongside slide projectors.

Darya Nikolskaya, director of 360Project said: "We started the implementation of this new form of classical concert performance, accompanied by large-scale projections, in cooperation with MMDM and the Moscow City Symphony Orchestra - 'Russian Philharmonic' - some years ago when we created the visual background for a series of concerts for children. Last year we showed in the same format Carmina Burana. The concept of such pe

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USA - The 52nd Grammy Awards were held on 31 January at the Los Angeles Staples Centre. The audience was the largest it's been in six years. The popularity of this year's production was put down in part to the performance?orientated programme, with live performances from artists including Beyoncé, Fergie and Pink.

Pink is one of the few singer?songwriters in the contemporary entertainment world who takes on challenging, performer?flying routines herself, creating her very own captivating fusion of stage arts. Her moving rendition of Glitter in the Air brought the crowd to their feet. Never missing a beat, Pink delivered the song from her Funhouse album with typical aplomb in conjunction with an elegant trapeze act.

Pink slipped into a white silk sling that lifted her up above the stage where she remained airborne throughout the song with three gold?clad si

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Germany Rental company Padco has supplied a Midas PRO6 for a spectacular European tour by Queen Esther Marrow and the Harlem Gospel Singers. The tour, which moved through Denmark, France, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, ended in Belgium at the end of January.

Putting the system through its paces on this vibrant show was German front of house engineer Werner Schmidl who, by his own admission, didn't get to choose the audio equipment on this tour. "As someone who was used to using another brand of digital console, it was hard to convince me, especially as I only had a few hours to get into the PRO6," he says.

"However Lars Lüdemann (from Midas' German distributor Mega Audio) did a great job in training me quickly. The whole system can be easily set up in a few minutes. The PRO6 is very logical and user friendly to operate. The control surface, which works with

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UK - MTA Audio is a new company specialising in the sales and distribution of RF audio for broadcast, film and live work. Focusing initially on Lectrosonics products, founder members Rob Piddington and Paul Hodsman will be concentrating on reintroducing this brand back into the UK marketplace.

Piddington is well known within the pro-audio community having held long-term senior sales and marketing positions at companies such as Sennheiser and Harman. Piddington says: "Lectrosonics have long been recognised as a global leader in wireless systems and now that Ofcom have allocated Channel 38 for PMSE users in the UK, it means 2010 presents an exciting opportunity for Lectrosonics' comprehensive product line."

Hodsman, who formerly ran his own advertising and marketing agency in the City, adds, "We are the first significant post-recessionary dealership to come into t

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UK - Tannoy's QFlex digitally steerable array system has been installed with great effect in one of Glasgow's most modern university conference facilities.

The Saltire Centre in Glasgow Caledonian University is home to the campus library and offers students access to the resources they need, in an open and airy environment. The £23m learning centre, situated in the heart of the university's campus, won several architecture and design awards after opening in January 2006 with the objective of integrating all learning and students services in one building.

The main atrium within the Saltire Centre has been used for events by the University, using hired in conventional loudspeaker systems, and had always resulted in complaints about the quality and intelligibility of the audio or the intrusiveness of the speaker positions.

In early November 2009, after an on-site demonstr

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