That's the question being explored by James Simpson of The Royal Opera House, Convent Garden, at his seminar at PLASA Focus: Leeds 2012. It may be a new technology to many but Simpson is keen to dispel the notion that visualisation as a concept is a novel idea, "Visualisation, simulation, virtual reality, illustration, demonstration, concept planning, call it what you will. It is all a method of demonstrating a thought process to other people. We have been visualising since cavemen drew on the walls to describe an idea and whilst the technology has progressed into hyper computers with 3D

UK - Artistic Licence Integration's stand at ARC 2012 packed a serious visual punch, enticing a constant stream of visitors throughout the two-day show. Based on a simple yet ingenious wall of interconnecting blocks, the luminous blue structure artfully incorporated display screens and the latest technology from the company's engineering division, including previews of two new products - dVnet and Diamond.

"I think I can safely say Artistic Licence has just enjoyed its most successful ARC show to date," enthuses company founder, Wayne Howell. "This year, we exhibited as

UK - PLASA Focus: Leeds will be a first for the d&b GB office, who will be at the show to introduce the E4 and E5,the latest teenyweeny additions to the time honoured E-Series, from their Black range.

Alongside these elegant little loudspeakers will be a selection of products picked from the White range. The 4S and 5S are equally small loudspeakers, designed for visual and acoustical integration into fixed applications.

Oran Burns and Steve Jones from the d&b GB Education and Application Support team will be offering visitors the chance to attend two seminars as part of the show's f

Germany - Robe will launch five innovative new LED based products at the 2012 Prolight+Sound exhibition in Frankfurt.

These are all in Robe's eco-conscious Robin range - with the emphasis on smaller, brighter, lighter and utilising genuinely more energy efficient technologies - underlining Robe's 'Think of the Future - consider Nature initiative. All of the products also use high powered RGBW LEDs.

The Robin DLX Spot is an RGBW LED Spot moving head, its smooth and seamless colour mixing achieved by using the RGBW LED system, with a virtual colour wheel and a series of pre-programmed

Germany - Alcons Audio, which marks its 10th anniversary of exhibiting at ProLight+Sound in 2012, will be showing a number of new products and updates to existing models on Stand G60, Hall 8.0.

The highlight of the company's presence at the show will be a completely new product group, the R-range, which takes Alcons' pro-ribbon cylindrical projection and coupling behaviour in new and different directions and brings the benefits of this technology to applications not previously served, says the company.

Another innovation is a new Q-series model. A completely new pro-ribbon transduce

Germany - High End Systems will be showcasing strong line-up of innovative product offerings at the 2012 Prolight and Sound tradeshow held 21-24 March, 2012 in Frankfurt. Several new products will make their European debut at this year's event.

High End Systems and Arcus will be demonstrating the capabilities of automated and digital lighting with an interactive display and hands-on opportunities. Visitors to the stand will have opportunities to fully experience the power and capabilities of High End Systems lighting controllers and fixtures.

Continuing the development of digital li

Germany - The new version of RMS, RMSAnywhere will be demonstrated at the upcoming Prolight and Sound exhibition in Frankfurt next week.

RMSAnywhere is a completely new build software-package, which operates entirely online. It allows for easy, safe access over the internet to all data needed for planning and calculating equipment, crew and transports.

There will be no need to install anything locally, an internet connection and a browser is all you need to work with RMSAnywhere.

RMSAnywhere supports Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. This also allows Mac-users

Germany - The A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) stand at Frankfurt (E63, hall 9.0) will feature a selection of leading brands including Chroma-Q, Jands and PixelRange.

The AC-ET stand will provide the EMEA tradeshow unveiling of the new Jands Vista L5 flagship media and lighting control console. The design includes a 21" HD Wacom pen tablet display, which makes it easy to manage today's mix of moving lights, media servers and LEDs. To celebrate the launch, there is a competition to win a MacBook Pro running the Vista v2 software (www.jandsvista.com/L5). A selection of other

USA - PLASA Focus: Nashville 2012 has launched with a new website and free online registration. The event will take place 11-12 July 2012 at the Municipal Auditorium, in Nashville, TN.

Nashville is the latest event to be launched under the PLASA Focus banner, and follows the hugely successful PLASA Focus: Austin, held in February of this year. The current series of North American regional events are modelled after PLASA Focus: Leeds (UK), which, in its third year, topped 2500 attendees.

PLASA Focus: Nashville 2012 will bring regional entertainment technology communities together to

UAE - PALME Middle East will demonstrate just how far production lighting has come in the Middle East when the three-day show gets underway at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre (DICEC) on 1 May, say the organisers.

The GCC region's longest-running trade convention for sound, lighting and AV professionals is expected to pack a serious visual punch as industry heavyweights, including Clay Paky, Robe and Martin Professional host dynamic theatres in an attempt to consolidate market share in the region.

Rudolph Anand, sales manager for the Informa exhibition, emphasi

The Netherlands - In response to higher-than-expected demand from its exhibitor community, Integrated Systems Events has announced the addition of further space to the footprint of ISE 2013. Following a rebooking process that has resulted in more space than ever being reserved for the next Integrated Systems Europe, the show's organisers have decided to make a part of Hall 8 of the Amsterdam RAI available to both new and existing exhibitors.

"This is not a decision we have taken lightly," comments Mike Blackman, managing director, Integrated Systems Events. "However, th

Germany - Doughty Engineering is introducing three new products at ProLight+Sound 2012, two of them designed specifically for smaller television studios.

Being seen for the first time is Doughty's all steel Beam Clamp which, with a wide adjustment range of up to 200mm, makes a flexible and versatile rigging point for hoisting equipment, pulley blocks or loads. With a forged eye and a central threaded spindle for easy attachment and safe and secure grip, the Beam Clamp has a safe working load of 1000kg.

Complementing Doughty's Quick Trigger range of clamps, the Baby Quick Trigger cla

Germany - At ProLight&Sound. Green Hippo will be releasing a service pack for the current 3.2 build of its award winning Hippotizer software. The release includes improvements to many of the popular components and contains over 80 minor fixes over the current release.

New features and New Hardware will also be on show, including I/O panels and the latest in 3G HD/SDI input cards as well as requested features such as keystone on each layer and a new Tap Tempo feature in Beat Bridge. Several new effects and Generators have also been added.

"Prolight and Sound is a great opportuni

Germany - High End Systems will be hosting a new competition at Prolight +Sound next week. The first ever Battle of the Hogs competition will take place daily on the High End Systems stand.

The Battle of the Hogs competition showcases the showmanship, timing and talent of Wholehog programmers and operators. Each participant will have 90 seconds to perform on the main console in the performance section of the High End Systems / Arcus booth. Utilizing state of the art lighting equipment such as Technospot, TechnoArc, trackspot Bolt and DLV Digital Lights, the contestants w

Germany - LED screen manufacturer Pixled will show its new Pixled F-10 i/o multi-purpose product on Booth E17, Hall 9 of the Prolight+Sound exhibition in Frankfurt.

This latest innovation from Pixled is a truly 'all-round' 10.4 mm pitch screen surface populated with three in one SMD chips that can be used indoors, outdoors or be rigged horizontally - and covered - to become a dynamic dancefloor and under-floor or stage effect.

The standard F-10 i/o tile is fully Indoor use ready. It is a mesh surface and therefore transparent, and excellent for creative indoor work including scenic

UK - IOEX, the International Outdoor Event Expo delivered a diverse audience of live event companies in its inaugural year from the worlds of sport, music, festivals, brand and corporate events.

The exhibition featured a well received seminar programme across the three days. Popular speakers and topics included Lord Shaftesbury talking about transforming his estate into an event space, Mumsnet co-founder Carrie Longton and Lollibop organisers Continental Drifts giving tips on how to engage families at events in 'The F Factor' and experiential agency RPM sharing the Five Rules of En

UK - Internationally respected lighting designer Richard Pilbrow has called the annual Knight of Illumination Awards "the most valuable gift to the entire lighting profession".

British-born Pilbrow, who now lives in America, is joint founder of the Association of British Theatre Technicians, Society of Theatre Consultants, The Society of British Theatre Designers, and the Association of Lighting Designers.

He has won countless awards, including the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award in Lighting Design from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Associati

Germany - Aside from its range of lighting equipment for theatre, opera and corporate event markets, Robert Juliat will be previewing two new profile ranges at Prolight + Sound 2012 in readiness for their launch later in the year.

On the stand will be the Lancelot 4000W HTI stadium effects projector, the successful 1800W MSR Victor followspot and, just to show that LED has not completely replaced tungsten, the Cink 325LF 2000W tungsten Fresnel which adds the 'traditional touch' to any lighting design. And, one year after the first occasion, the Robert Juliat stand will be lit using th

Germany - ArKaos will bring two new innovations at this year's Prolight+Sound - the ArKaos Hub, an intelligent network monitor software for media servers running MediaMaster Pro and a new revolutionary Video Mapping Software making its first public appearance at the show.

ArKaos Hub is an application specifically designed to monitor the state of multiple servers running MediaMaster in Fixture Mode. It can also send configurable commands to any video switchers connected to Ethernet using a TCP/IP address.

However, ArKaos Hub's key function is as a real-time backup system that gives i

Germany - Roland Systems Group (RSG) will be demonstrating their increasing strength in both the professional audio and the professional video market at ProLight + Sound this week.

On the audio side, the range of V-Mixer digital mixing consoles, M-48 live personal mixers, Digital Snake I/O units and the R-1000 48 track recorder/players will be featured. These products (as well as other audio products in the RSG range) can be configured easily as a flexible, expandable system using REAC (Roland Ethernet Audio Communication), the proprietary technology from Roland for low latency, high

Germany - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light will be showcasing lighting solutions from their exclusive product line at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt this week on stand A61 in Hall 9.0.

On display will be the White Light Family of products, which will include those from i-Pix, Core Lighting, Prism Projection, Interactive Technologies, Galaxia and CITC FX.

On show from i-Pix will be the Satellite Mk. II. Building upon the success of its highly successful predecessor, the Mk. II Satellite has been completely redesigned. Eight 10 watt high powered RGB and daylight white ligh

Germany - At Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt this morning, JoeCo Limited introduces the latest product in its BlackBox range of multi-channel live audio recorders and players in the form of the new Blackbox BBR64-Dante Recorder that can record or replay 64 channels.

The BBR64-Dante is the result of JoeCo's collaboration with Audinate, creators of the award-winning Dante digital media networking solution. The original BBR-DANTE system was released in 2011 and was able to record up to 32 channels of audio from a Dante network. The new BBR64-DANTE now doubles that track count to 64, while

Germany - UK LED manufacturer i-Pix launches two new i-Line range products at Prolight+Sound in Frankfurt - a 600 mm / 2' six cell unit and a 1200 mm / 4' twelve cell.

These can be seen on the stand of i-Pix German distributor Focon Showtechnik in Hall 9 at Booth D51A where members of the i-Pix team are also be on hand giving demonstrations and answering queries.

UK and Ireland distributor and i-Pix global stockist, White Light will also show the full range of products on their Booth A61, also in Hall 9.

This latest technology from i-Pix builds on the success of the renowned BB ra

Germany - AuviTran, the Audio networking specialist, and Audinate, the inventors of the award winning Dante media networking solution, have announced today the addition of Dante technology to its Audio Toolbox product range. Audinate was chosen to accelerate AuviTran's development towards new networking technologies.

"The integration of Dante technology into our product portfolio will allow AuviTran to address market's demands for new network interoperability. Dante offers our customers a smart path to AVB. AuviTran is continuously and consistently expanding its product offer in

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