UK - West Midlands- based technical production specialist CPL (Central Presentations Ltd) supplied LED screens and all associated processing and vision control for two major stages - The Baillie Gifford Stage and Friends Stage - at the 2022 Hay Festival of Literature & Arts. This year Hay Festival celebrated its 35th year in style with over 500 ‘live’ events staged across 11 days which included an impressive line-up of in-person appearances from Hillary Clinton, Svetlana Alexievich, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Stephen Fry, Nicola Sturgeon, Minnie Driver, Monica Ali, Damian Lewis, Jimmy Page, Damon Galgut, Ben Okri and more, uniting readers and writers together in a series sustainable events designed to inspire, examine and entertain. Each of the two CPL supplied arenas featured a central 4.5m-wide by 2.5m - wide LED screen at the back of the stage, flanked by two 2.5m b
Germany - Optocore has appointed RadhaMohan Rajani, who joins the technical sales support team and will work across both Optocore and sister company, BroaMan. After studying Visual Communications, Rajani joined Warren Dsouza’s Mumbai-based rental company Sound.com in 2014, where he first started using Optocore devices. This was specifically on the large stadium events and opening/closing games ceremonies in which Sound.com specialises. In 2016, he relocated to Poland to work for Fotis Sound (another Optocore client) -working on festivals, tours and concert set-up prior to the pandemic. In 2019, he underwent his full Optocore Certification Training (OCT) at company HQ in Munich. As a member of the Tech Support team, he will focus on client communications and relations with a particular emphasis on building BroaMan’s presence in the market. BroaMan MD Ti
Singapore - Theatre consultancy Theatreplan is providing the technical know-how for the upgrade of the cabling infrastructure from the analogue tie-lines system to a digital IP-based network to serve sound, video, communications and lighting across all venues, plus new facilities for digital media at Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay in Singapore. Opened in 2002, Esplanade is a major centre for the performing arts, located at Marina Bay, on the bank of the Singapore River. The centre consists of a concert hall for 1,600 people, a theatre with a 1,950-seat capacity, a recital studio for 245 people, and a theatre studio accommodating up to 220. Having been appointed in 2019, Theatreplan’s work has continued throughout the pandemic and is on-going. The scope of work includes a feasibility study, a detailed site survey, technical design recommendations and development of a
China - With over 10 years of experience in advertising, photography, film and television production, the Shanghai MuShang Advertising Co is familiar with the use of technologies to enhance customer experiences. Its latest brainchild, MuShang XR stage, uses cutting-edge technology including Brompton Technology LED processing, ROE Visual screens, Mark Roberts Motion Control cinebots, Unreal Engine and disguise media server hardware, to deliver visual creativity and high-quality productions. “We’ve been working in the creative industries for over a decade and know all too well the complexities associated with large-scale, outdoor production settings,” explains Henry Sha, the founder of Shanghai MuShang Ad CO. “From manpower to lighting equipment, to tons of things in between, we wanted to bring a more efficient and cost-effective way of doing productions to our clients
Singapore - SurgeX has appointed Generation AV as its sales agency in the Asia Pacific region. The agreement will see Generation AV staff based in Asia providing a full service, encompassing sales, training and technical support for the brand in pro audio, residential and pro AV markets. “We’re very happy to be working with Generation AV, which has the specialist expertise and regional market understanding that we need to help grow our presence in APAC,” comments Justin Peyton, director of sales EMEA and APAC at SurgeX. “Generation AV has an excellent record of delivering for brands, and we’re excited to work with them to further establish ourselves in this territory with our extensive range of power management solutions. “This deal will also be of huge benefit to our existing partners in the region, who will now have access to a team able to provide local
UK - Educational roadshows led by BlackTrax specialist Tom Boucher have been outlining to students the creative possibilities BlackTrax offers to live event professionals. Students have been bringing their ideas to life by using CAST’s innovative technology. “Taking BlackTrax into an educational environment has introduced students to technology that they will come across in the workforce. It has given students the ability to create scenarios, ask questions and really get to grips with BlackTrax as a system and the numerous integration possibilities,” says Tom Boucher. Many questions were answered, and the system was put to the test, right down to students calibrating a BlackTrax Real system themselves and learning how to get their educational wysiwyg license. “I really enjoyed using the BlackTrax system, I thought it was intuitive and relatively easy,”
Poland - Cavatina Hall, which opened at the beginning of the year in the city of Bielsko-Biała, is the first concert hall in the country to be built and managed entirely from private funds. This multi-functional building, combining office and cultural spaces, is set over six storeys on more than 9,000sq.m and includes a recording studio as well as a 1,000-seat concert hall. Its AV infrastructure is woven into a sophisticated digital/analogue network, designed around an Optocore backbone, feeding a multiplicity of signals to an L-Acoustics L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal sound system from a pair of roving DiGiCo Quantum 338 consoles, operating from four different locations. These were specified and delivered by system integrators Audio Plus, along with the latest stage mechanics and AV technologies, including sound and light tracking, variable acoustics and visual inf
Turkey - Pioneering virtual production house MGX Studio recently delivered the country’s first film with car chase action scenes, enabled by a LED stage powered by Brompton Technology processing. Owned by MGX Film and based in Istanbul, MGX Studio is Turkey’s first virtual production (VP) studio and, since its inception in 2021, has already delivered a number of high-profile productions, including projects with Netflix and award-winning Turkish production company, Autonomy. The studio set up comprises a 9,600×1,536 pixels resolution 100sq.m curved LED wall, along with 125sq.m of LED ceiling panels, which are used for lighting and reflections. This configuration is powered using three Brompton Tessera SX40 processors and five Tessera XD 10G data distribution units to provide a 10-bit colour depth image. Entitled Anka, the film’s plot concerns the ri
USA - ADJ is expanding its COB Cannon Series of LED wash fixtures as well as its new range of lighting products incorporating lime LED chips with the introduction of the COB Cannon LP200ST. Featuring a powerful light engine, smooth colour mixing and wide beam angle, this flexible professional wash lighting fixture can be used for a wide variety of applications. The COB Cannon LP200ST harnesses the power of an efficient 200W COB (Chip On Board) LED light source, which generates a potent and even output with no colour shadows. This efficient light engine combines red, green, blue, amber and lime LED chips to allow the creation of a huge gamut of colours as well as white light with a variable colour temperature of between 2300K and 9900K. The inclusion of the lime LED chip helps certain colours to appear more vivid and also boosts the CRI to in excess of 90. The LED engin
UK - The Guildhall School of Music and Drama will host short courses on sound design and video projection at the end of July. Taking place concurrently from 25-29 July, Sound Design for Theatre and Introduction to Video Projection Mapping are available to anyone aged 16 or over for a fee of £525 (£1,035 inclusive of accommodation). Teaching will take place daily and the training will be given in person only. Led by Video Design lecturer Angeline Ferguson, Introduction to Video Projection Mapping is aimed at beginners. Learners will find out how to prepare and project video onto a 3D structure using industry standard video projection software Resolume Arena 7 and Adobe After Effects. They will also be introduced to the basic principles and techniques of digital video mapping, including designing concepts for projection mapping, creating content a
USA - Brompton Technology revealed its latest solutions for video processing during InfoComm 2022. The company showcased its LED processing solutions for live events, broadcast, and virtual production. During the show, Brompton was also recognised with an InfoComm 2022 Best of Show Award in the AV Technology category for its Tessera v3.3 software. This release introduced new calibration features such as PureTone and Operating Modes, which enable rental companies and studios to have more flexibility and scalability with their stock, and also added support for the ACEScg colour gamut and the ability to display tracking markers for the Mo-Sys StarTracker camera tracking system. Additionally during InfoComm, Rob Fowler, director of business development at Brompton, addressed AV professionals in a session about how virtual production has affected design trends in LED panels
UK - Following recent contract wins at three of the UK’s leading event venues, AV and entertainment technology company Anna Valley has promoted Dan Orchard to the role of venue director. The newly created position sees Orchard assuming responsibility for both commercial and operational aspects at all the venues where Anna Valley is the preferred audio-visual partner, reporting directly to the board. Over the last 18 months, Anna Valley has established itself as a significant service provider to the UK’s venue sector. The company signed a preferred partnership agreement with ExCel London in December 2020, was appointed by Tobacco Dock as their new AV service partner in June 2021 and expanded their existing AV maintenance contract with The NEC Group to help deliver events at the venue as part of their Preferred Supplier Programme in January 2022. Anna Valley is also the i
Germany - Manufacturer of professional 3D audio technology Holoplot has announced that its X1 Matrix Array loudspeaker has taken home Best in Show awards from both ISE 2022 and InfoComm 2022. These events marked the first public unveiling of the X1 Matrix Array following two years of delays and cancellations of industry trade shows due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Holoplot also picked up the 2022 Stand Design Award - organised by Exhibitor magazine, with Illuminarium winning Best Multipurpose Venue at the Mondo Awards for its Atlanta location, where X1 is an integral part of delivering next immersive experiences. Thomas Barker-Harrold, head of marketing at Holoplot said: “We couldn’t be happier with the validation X1 received from our peers in the AV industry. Picking up not just one but two Best-in show awards at ISE and InfoComm is an enormous sta
Switzerland - Imverse, a company providing volumetric pixel solutions, has secured $4.8m to develop its software platform, expand its team, and roll out its products globally. Imverse has created a solution for volumetric content and live hologram, which uses a proprietary volumetric pixel (voxel) graphics engine which is capable of live capture, rendering and streaming of multiple holograms in real-time for telepresence applications. This is in contrast to polygons, which currently dominate the virtual and augmented reality space. As a result, Imverse can create full-body volumetric 'humans' without industrial cameras or powerful computing equipment, and with low latency, says the company. This enables the delivery of volumetric content at the same rate as mainstream video conferencing technology such as Zoom or Teams. Imverse Holo enables creators and busines
UK - There is a new name in the UK’s AV installation market - Flipside AV. The new brand is a result of the changing business model for the London-based systems integrator, Flipside Soundsystem, which has seen the company close its rental business to focus purely on installed AV projects. “This name change has not happened overnight, it is the result of a gradual shift in our priorities at Flipside,” explains Flipside AV MD, James Cooper. “As we have evolved as a company, the AV installation side of the business has gone from strength to strength and become the main driver for where we see our future.” Alongside the name change, Flipside AV has also completely redesigned its website to provide a clear focus on what the company does. The redesign covers the services Flipside AV offers, as well as the solutions it can provide and the venues that it will typical
UK - The Immersive Experience Network has held its inaugural Live Experience Summit, bringing together over 150 creators of immersive and interactive experiences to debate the future of the sector. The Immersive Experience Network has been established to support creators making new work, developing audiences and growing financially sustainable companies. The Network’s strategy is centred around encouraging collaboration by building a community of creators, facilitating knowledge-sharing and undertaking research to grow the sector. The community includes genres from across the immersive sector, including immersive theatre, scare attractions, escape rooms, Location based VR/AR, experiential art, immersive audio, Live Action Role Play (Larp), themed attractions, Alternate Reality Games (ARG) and transmedia experiences The inaugural summit, held on 31 May, includ
USA - The One Canvas Solution from Calibre UK has won an AV Technology and Installation InfoComm 2022 Best in Market awards at the recent InfoComm show in Las Vegas. The awards were judged by team of InfoComm CTS-qualified technology managers, integrators and consultants. “We’re grateful for the industry recognition of our talented R&D team’s innovation to our One Canvas Solution,” comments Mike Novak who is newly-appointed to manage the North American market at Calibre UK. The Calibre One Canvas Solution is suitable for large-scale and multi-screen 4K conference applications. The HQPro1000 scaler/switcher with 4K50/60Hz 4:4:4 RGB processing and 4K EDID management can manage up to four LEDFusion Pro screens with flexible screen layout at any one time using a simple control interface. A Quad2K card is available for optional splicing for four 2K output as n
UK - Visual storytelling technology platform disguise has released its new flagship media server: the vx 4+. Purpose-built for technically demanding productions, installations and shows, the vx 4+ is designed ‘to ensure maximum content quality and playback performance, enabling productions to push boundaries and captivate audiences like never before’. With the capability to handle twice the amount of video layers versus its award-winning predecessor, the new disguise vx 4+ machine ramps up storage performance and significantly improves video throughout, with up to 100GbE in bandwidth for higher resolution live video. “Production teams are perpetually seeking to push the boundaries of what is possible, with many experimenting with new technologies and workflows, using real-time content or using video content at unlimited scale and complexity. As these ambitions
Germany - As the exclusive global manufacturer of Philips professional displays, PPDS is dedicated to helping integrators learn about and test the latest technologies, products and opportunities that can help grow their businesses. Building on its strategy to bring seamless global business locally, PPDS has launched its first full-solutions showroom in Munich, featuring Philips professional displays and virtual collaboration systems from ClearOne. The new 155sq.m showroom is designed to highlight new solutions for various spaces and client types, with dedicated rooms set up to demonstrate how new technologies can be integrated to optimize conference rooms, meeting rooms, retail spaces, classrooms, hotel guest rooms and even home offices. According to Christian Krela, channel manager for PPDS in Germany, the new Munich showroom is the company’s first demo space to focus on
Spain - Christie will showcase its cinema technologies designed to meet the needs of every screen size at CineEurope, taking place 20-23 June at Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona (CCIB). A selection from Christie’s range of Xenon, RGBe and Real|Laser projectors, and new Cinergy theatre management platform, will be available to view in MR 134, as will Christie Vive Audio and Christie CounterAct, with Care222 - the first UVC disinfection technology with proprietary optical filter that can be used when people are present. “We’re excited to gather with the industry at an exciting time in cinema’s continued recovery,” says Adil Zerouali, senior director EMEA Cinema, Christie. “Since our last visit to CineEurope, we have further broadened our range of solutions to make Christie an outstanding choice for exhibitors seeking an impactful cinematic experien
UAE - The recently opened Dubai Hills Mall is a destination in a popular tourist spot, offering opportunities for shopping, dining and entertainment. It is also home to The Storm, the fastest indoor rollercoaster in the city; an adventurous ride that stands 50m tall. Showcasing the latest innovations in engineering, The Storm features a vertical launch to 50m in just five seconds. The 670m track weaves throughout the entire mall building, making it a spectacle to watch and a unique experience for riders. Experiences operator Emaar Entertainment created the concept of the rollercoaster set into the heart of the shopping mall. They appointed engineering experts Cundall to design and deliver The Storm. As the lead design consultant, Cundall provided a range of services including structural engineering and lighting design. To fulfil the design, Creation Gulf were bro
Australia - Lightware Visual Engineering has opened new offices in central Sydney. Located in the Newington Technology Park and surrounded by the Sydney Olympic Park and Sydney harbour, the new APAC HQ features a dedicated training centre, a showroom, a tech lab, a warehouse, and office and meeting spaces. All Sydney-based Lightware staff will be working from these new headquarters. The opening of the new office is the next strategic step in expanding the company’s global footprint. It will be a central hub for customers and partners across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, providing sales support, after-sale technical support, on the ground customer support and product demonstrations for all of Lightware’s products. Newington Technology Park is a hub for major technology brands in the region, including Viewsonic, Bose, Sony, Ainsworth, Pelican, CAE and
Australia - After a three-year hiatus, Vivid Sydney 2022 is now underway. Millions of expected visitors will descend on the 8km Vivid Sydney Light Walk that’s packed full of large-scale projection mapping, LED screens, wayfinding and high-powered media server technology linking the Festival’s 50 installations and projection artworks from Sydney Opera House to Central Station. Festival director Gill Minervini, who directs her first Vivid Sydney in 2022, explains: “For 12 years we’ve relied on TDC working behind-the-scenes to deploy the brightest, most powerful technology on a grand scale helping to reinvent Sydney’s urban landscape and using it as a unique and colourful canvas capturing the essence of Sydney’s soul.” Michael Hassett, founder and managing director at TDC - Technical Direction Company - adds: “Each year, Vivid Sydney gets bigger, brighter
USA - Xytech has appointed Keith Buckley as the company’s president and CEO, succeeding Richard Gallagher, the company’s founder. Gallagher will now advise the company’s board as envisioned when Xytech was acquired by Banneker Partners in December 2021. Most recently, Buckley served as the CEO of Federos, an AI-optimised analytics and automation software solutions provider for complex networks that was recently sold to Oracle. He previously served as president and CEO of The Switch Enterprises. “I’m joining Xytech as the company is poised for significant growth, and look forward to leveraging Xytech’s highly skilled team, strong base of product offerings, long history of core successes and its world-class customer base,” Buckley says. “The investments we’re planning and will execute upon in the immediate future will substantially increase Xytech’s
