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Lighting

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Australia - Melbourne Airport welcomes over 30m travellers each year, with that number set to grow over the next few years. A team of visionaries at APAM (Australia Pacific Airports Melbourne) decided that these travellers, and those who come to greet them, deserved a better experience.

LumenRadio's long-term OEM partner, ENTTEC together with Mint Lighting Design, was brought on-board to provide custom lighting solution to realize the vision and design proposed for Melbourne Airport.

Mint Lighting Design and ENTTEC transformed the forecourt and main terminal façade with a dynamic lighting installation. The project has 12 individual sites programmed as one to create an intricate, synchronized light show with more than 40,000 pixels requiring 57 universes of control. The project involved more than 2,140 individual components.

In order to distribute DMX data to the difficult l

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USA - When it comes to big stages, there are few with as many operational complexities as the annual Super Bowl. Months before knowing which teams will play in the game, teams of production experts are busy planning all of the technical aspects of the event. This year the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl played on consecutive weekends at the same stadium, adding to the logistics issues. Having worked with the Super Bowl decor teams since 2005, Dall Brown knows as well as anyone about the challenges of this year's event at the University of Phoenix Stadium.

Wireless Spectrum Challenges

NFL Frequency Coordination - controlling who uses which radio frequencies, when, and for what purposes - is carefully planned and enforced. This is to accommodate varied technical requirements of everything from hundreds of two way radios, wireless microphones and cameras, to ticket processing and

PLASA Show 2025 - Banner - June-Aug 2025

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UK - SGM's award-winning LED technology can be found in a diverse range of applications around the world - with its eye-catching 3D pixel tubes typically found zipping across dancefloor ceilings.

But in a completely unique deployment, 68 of the LT-200 2m tubes now form a pulsating sculpture in a brain science institute. This is at the heart of designer Bob Crowley's set for the new Tom Stoppard play, The Hard Problem at the Dorfman Theatre, part of the National Theatre on London's South Bank.

It was a YouTube video of a spinning cube that first set Crowley's creative juices flowing, and faced with the task of emulating this effect in order to represent brain pulses, the theatre's lighting operations manager, Marc Williams and control supervisor, Daniel Murfin tracked down SGM's 3D pixel tubes after visiting the PLASA Show, and seeing them displayed on the website of Madrix LED

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South Africa - Johannesburg-based DWR Distribution will be hosting Avolites training sessions this month, with a one-day Titan One training session on 24 February, followed by a three-day Basic to Advanced course from 25-27 February. The training will be presented by DWR's Gareth Chambers.

Nick Britz from DWR comments: "Gareth Chambers hosts regular training sessions which are well received by the industry. He has a great knowledge on lighting and control, having formally worked in the rental market. He is also very passionate about sharing this knowledge."

The Titan One DMX USB Dongle allows the user to output one line of DMX with the full functionality of Avolites Titan Software. Users are able to access powerful features such as Pixelmapper, Quicksketch, Media Clip Select, Attribute Control-Blades and ShapeGenerator. Titan One allows unlimited usage providing unin

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USA - Every music festival offers fans a chance to get away from it all, but few do this quite so dramatically - or literally - as Jam Cruise and Holy Ship! Produced by Cloud 9 Adventures, these floating festivals serve up hours of live music on the decks of cruise ships plying their way through the warm Caribbean waters to exotic ports of call like Half Moon Bay, Bahamas and Roatán, Honduras.

The Design Oasis (Davie, FL) created an engaging environment at both nautical music fests with a lightshow designed by Cris Kuroda that's anchored by 72 MVP 12 LED video panels from Chauvet Professional.

"Jam Cruise and Holy Ship! both feature big-name artists, and both draw large crowds expecting to have the time of their lives," said Abbas Ritscher of The Design Oasis, the cross rental house that supplied the lighting and video gear for both cruises. "Cris and video eng

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South Africa - The first Robe BMFLs have been in action on a variety of events in South Africa, utilized by some of the country's leading lighting designers, the new multi-purpose fixtures have certainly been put through their paces on a wide variety of shows.

The very first South African based LD to use them was production designer Tim Dunn of Gearhouse South Africa (GHSA) on the Krone Music Festival at the Grand Arena, Grandwest Casino, Cape Town. The event is one of the most popular SA showcases for Afrikaans music, and this year Tim's in-the-round concept brought a new standard of presentation to the 5000 capacity venue.

Tim positioned the four BMFLs on trusses above the stage and used them throughout the show mainly for a variety of interesting gobo looks onto the white stage floor.

"It's an absolutely beautiful light," he declared. "I think Robe have lis

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Canada - The award-winning W-DMX technology by Wireless Solution Sweden AB was once again used on Canada's prestigious Grey Cup Halftime Show, held at the BC Place in Vancouver. The game decides the champion of the Canadian Football League. The halftime show was designed by Vancouver-based Electric Aura and featuring rock band Imagine Dragons.

W-DMX was hard at work high above the stage and over the audience. Production designer Robert Sondergaard of Electric Aura explains, "We used the W-DMX to get from the field level up to the jumbotron. We had some Martin MAC III fixtures there for backlight on the band and luckily there was 100 amps of power in there. There was no physical way to get cable there so W-DMX was the only option if we wanted these lights. We also had a number of moving lights high up in the audience. We used W-DMX to control these as there would have been n

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Israel - Located about 500m from the beach in Israel's fifth largest city, Ashdod, Leonardo Plaza Hotel got a stunning lighting makeover before it's opening in September last year.

LumenRadio's distributor in Israel, Danor Theatre and Studio systems Ltd, supplied and installed 13 units of Studio Due's City Beam LED 12 at the front façade of the hotel prior to the opening.

The City Beams have been fitted with integrated LumenRadio's wireless CRMX OEM DMX receiver modules allowing remote data control, which is especially useful for outdoor applications, for convenience of operation as well as saving on cabling. Going wireless also makes it possible to very easily move the units around the hotel area as needed.

The City Beam LED 12s are used to wash the columns of the hotel with a beautiful appealing variety of color effects. In order to wirelessly distribute DMX data to the C

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UK - Tenor Alfie Boe's career has only gained strong momentum ever since he was famously discovered polishing cars at Blackpool's TVR Factory at age 17. He recently undertook a major UK tour, where Martin Professional's newest MAC Quantum Profile fixtures proved that they are perfectly at home in live arena-sized productions.

Running from 29 November 29 to 13 December, 2014, the 11-show tour stopped at most of the UK's major arenas. Lite Alternative supplied lighting, with the rig including five Martin Professional MAC Quantum profiles and 15 Mac Vipers.

"We were trying to create a 1930s club scene," said John Ginley, Lite Alternative Project Manager and Alfie's Lighting Designer. "Alfie wanted to keep it Art Deco, with lots of shadows and shapes in the light. We decided to use the MAC Quantum Profiles and MAC Vipers together because they are both very efficient

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Europe - When American R&B/Hip-Hop star Usher set out on his 50-date The UR Experience US and European tour to promote his latest album UR, his touring LD Eric Wade (of FOHShow) was carrying an inventory that included no fewer than 216 of GLP's compact and highly flexible X4 S LED spots.

They form a focal part of the design conceived by production designers Baz Halpin and Chris Nyfield (Silent House) and Wade himself. Coincidentally, all had been early adopters of the X4 S platform.

On the UR Experience Tour, these are mainly deployed on the upstage wall of the automated ladders. Wade confirmed, "I wanted a wall of light from the very beginning and Baz and Chris made the space. The lighting system is a combination of asymmetrical and symmetrical. However, the GLP ladders are symmetrical and run on automation up/down/stage left/stage right and we could get ma

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USA - The new Platinum FLX from Elation Professional offers a three-in-one hybrid luminaire with exceptional power that has flexible use as a spot, beam, or wash light. Designed for a wide variety of professional stage and special event applications, its 470W Philips MSD Platinum 20R lamp can emit up to 23,000 lumens, an output comparable to 1200W fixtures and powerful enough to cut through bright LED displays and sizable rigs full of lights. It performs exceptionally well in a variety of lighting applications thanks to its full-feature design including CMY and variable CTO colour mixing.

Featuring new lamp technology and an innovative optical system, the Platinum FLX does the work of three luminaires in one. Using the same patent-pending dual optical design as Elation's Platinum SBX, Beam mode and Spot mode perform under their own independent optical systems resulting in a narr

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Denmark Martin Professional reports that the VC-Grid and VC-Strip LED Video family is now shipping in 15, 30, and 60 mm pixel pitches. Designed for architectural installations, stage design, and television set elements, Martin's VC family ensures design freedom for lighting designers and integrators on any creative LED Video project, says the company.

Martin's VC-Grid is a compact and powerful LED video panel that offers individually controllable pixels in RGB and cool, medium and warm white colors. The VC-Grid can be controlled via DMX or Martin's awarding-winning P3 protocol that provides high-quality image processing that eliminates the need for DMX pixelmapping, loose power supplies, and cabling. A hybrid power/data cabling systems also allows multiple VC-Grids to be easily daisy-chained for more creative designs.

"I'm really excited how these products make working wi

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South Africa - Johannesburg based rental and production company Lucidity has just invested in its first Robe moving lights - with the purchase of six Pointes and six LEDWash 300s from Robe's Robin series. These were delivered by Robe's South African distributor DWR.

Lucidity - founded in 2000 by Paul Newman - also has a presence in Cape Town and Durban, and has built up a reputation for servicing a portfolio of high end corporate clients plus a selection of other premium live events.

Initially Lucidity's focus was on audio and AV, also acquiring rigging and trussing along the way. Although this was Paul's first major lighting purchase, his 25 years of experience which includes international touring and working in some of the country's busiest venues, he appreciates the value of buying quality.

The decision was prompted by increasingly paying for lighting cross rentals for va

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South Africa - Lighting designer Francois van der Merwe will present Vectorworks Training during March at DWR Distribution, Johannesburg. There are four different courses to choose from, all of which will include training notes and lunch.

A Basic One Day Training course takes place on 9 March. Subjects include Basic Fundamentals, Layouts, Pallets, Basic Tools, Classts & Layers.

The Intermediate Two Day Training will be hosted on 10-11 March. Topics include Preferences, Workspace, Basic Spotlight, Basic Renderworks and Intermediate Tools. The cost is R1 500.00 incl. VAT.

The Advanced Two Day Training will be held on 12-13 March. Subjects include Working Planes, Advanced Modelling and Advanced Renderworks.

Alternatively, delegates may prefer attending all of the above-mentioned dates for Full Vectorworks Training Week held from 9-13 March.

(Jim Evans)

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USA - GLP could hardly have picked a more auspicious event than the Halftime Show at Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona for its new X4 Bar 20 LED batten to make a spectacular North American debut.

For the duration of the 12-minute segment, at which Katy Perry headlined, experienced LD Bob Barnhart (of Full Flood) used 12 of the new X4 Bar 20, as well as 16 of another recently introduced fixture, GLP's large format impression X4 XL.

For Barnhart, who has used various generations of the impression at other high profile events over the years, this was his 17th outing at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

GLP US's president Mark Ravenhill recalls his early conversations with the LD when he introduced the new X4 Bar 20, GLP's new zooming and tilting batten unit. "Bob was looking for something new for the upstage portion of one of the stages - a low profile fixture that would ad

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South Africa - Avolites Titan One Training will be hosted at DWR Distribution, Johannesburg, on 24 February 2015. Gareth Chambers will present the course.

The Titan One has proved to be a cost effective solution for lighting applications. It offers fast and intuitive control of intelligent lighting, dimmers and LED effects from one on screen console.

"The Titan One is a small but powerful lighting solution," commented Nick Britz from DWR. "Gareth Chambers hosts regular training sessions which are well received by the industry. He has a great knowledge on lighting and control, having formally worked in the rental market. He is also very passionate about sharing this knowledge."

"Once delegates have a better understaind of how the software works, it helps build confidence when running shows," added Britz.

Delegates are requested to provide lapto

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UK - Philips Entertainment has been announced as the main sponsor of The Fresnel Lecture - a special free event organised by the Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) that will take place on Tuesday 10 March at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

The talk is to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Augustine Fresnel's Wave Theory of Light, which also coincides with UNESCO's International Year of Light 2015. Fresnel's findings are the basis for the lecture, which will discuss: '200 years of Fresnel: Why everything we light and look at today depends on what he said' and will be presented by Peter Phillipson.

"I am delighted that the Society of Light and Lighting Fresnel Lecture is being sponsored by Philips, alongside the International Association of Lighting Designers," says Phillipson. "Thanks to their support it means that 200 years of Fresnel's wave theory wi

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UK - Collecting together his experiences working with technology as a programmer, writing about old technology in his Classic Gear column for LSi, and trying to save some of that technology with the Backstage Heritage Collection, Rob Halliday will be talking about the history of computers in entertainment lighting at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, near Milton Keynes on Thursday 12 March. Bletchley Park is perhaps most famous for hosting the World War 2 code-breakers. The National Museum of Computing houses a collection of historic computing equipment; perhaps in time it might provide a home to some of the Backstage Heritage Collection's historic memory lighting controls! Rob's talk is one of the museum's regular series that covers everything from the history of visual effects at the BBC to ultra-high resolution digital photography. He'll be focussing mainly on the

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Saudi Arabia - An array of Showline's LED luminaires have lit the launch of a national Saudi employment initiative following Riyadh-based event producer Maestro's investment in Showline stock.

The award winning company purchased Showline SL BAND 300 RGBW, SL STRIP 400 (both RGBW and Tunable White) SL BAR 520 and SL BAR 620 luminaires. The units were employed to deliver stunning lighting for the function, which was attended by members of the ministry, members of the Shoura Council and top executives from the companies involved in the scheme.

"We came across the Showline products at Prolight and Sound last year, and were extremely impressed," says project manager Nawal El Masri. "We decided to purchase them as the quality was so high - the standard we offer our clients."

Maestro has an impressive portfolio, with experience managing a broad range of events f

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World - Kylie Minogue recently completed the first leg of her Kiss Me Once tour, which included stops throughout Europe. The second leg of the tour begins in March 2015 with five shows in Kylie's native Australia. Following the successful tour of Europe, lighting designer Rob Sinclair and lighting director Louisa Smurthwaite provided insight into the creative processes behind the tour's extensive lighting design, which prominently featured fixtures from Martin Professional

Very early in the process, even before the new music was available, Sinclair had a meeting with Creative Director William Baker and Set Designer Alan Macdonald, during which it was decided that 'precise geometry' and 'Bauhaus aesthetics' were to be the key themes for the set design, inspired by the lines of the set and the early costume ideas. Baker then created a very detailed and instructive style gui

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The Netherlands - Dutch rockers BLØF have an enthusiastic and eclectic fanbase as well as earning serious respect for the musical integration of sounds, styles and genres from a diversity of cultures into their work, so the ability to 'paint' with light when constructing their live shows is key to evolving the look and feel of the visual environment.

For BL°F's recent show at Amsterdam's 17,000 capacity Ziggo Dome lighting designer Patrick Kramer did exactly this ... with a little help from over 200 Robe moving lights including 26 of the new BMFL Spots.

Patrick cut his professional lighting career teeth in the theatre and has always liked to work as part of a creative team. On this one, he collaborated with set and video designer Bart van Rooy and between them, the concept of building geometric shapes, squares and rectangles evolved. These were based on a Layher sca

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USA - James Schipper of Kinetic Lighting wanted something special to draw attention to the stage at the after-meeting party area during What's Next, a high profile, high-tech NBC Comcast conference on the future of television. "This was a crowd of visionary people involved in looking at new ideas that will one day shape the world of media, so they weren't going to be very moved by a bread-and-butter display," said the LD. "We knew that if we wanted to dazzle them, we would have to go with something bold."

Schipper got the look he was seeking with a massive diagonally slanted overhang array of high-output Nexus 4x4 LED panels from Chauvet Professional. Starting close to ceiling level upstage, the truss overhang formed a descending wedge of rich and varied colours as it moved down stage. The movement of the lights on the array, along with their intense o

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USA - Known by many as the best kept secret in the entertainment world, the Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas provides professional level training by some of the most well-respected minds in the industry, on the most powerful equipment, such as ETC lighting desks. "The Stagecraft Institute of Las Vegas is a total immersion experience," explains faculty member and lighting designer Brian Gale. "It's where you get the muscle memory that is required to work efficiently in stagecraft disciplines."

The non-profit Stagecraft Institute began in 2006 and provides an immersive education to around 70 people each summer, 90 per cent of whom receive either a full or partial scholarship. All of the topics of study revolve around disciplines within the world of stagecraft and live entertainment, including lighting design and programming, media programming, sound, costumes,

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UK - As part of the design and development of their World Duty Free store in Heathrow's new Terminal 2 - The Queen's Terminal - travel retailer World Duty Free Group (WDFG) commissioned a remarkable LedGo FLEX curved LED solution to provide a highly adaptable fascia for their tax and duty free store - creating one of the UK's largest fixed-installation LED walls.

Concept visuals of the new store revealed curved surfaces running along the front of the entire shop fascia. This gave World Duty Free Group and Blynk Digital Media's Neil Muir the idea to fill the surfaces with LedGo's innovative FLEX curved LED panels, to display eye-catching, moving content, visuals and tailored messaging to visitors in the new terminal.

Blynk Digital Media approached A.C. Video, a specialist sales division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd., to supply them with the LedGo FLEX curved L

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  5. Robe rig backs Metronomy Love Letters dates
  6. Ayrton LEDs add highlights to Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX
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