USA - Electrosonic provided video, audio and control equipment and integration for the new Carol J. and Barney Barnett Learning Centre at The Florida Aquarium in Tampa. The new facility builds on Electrosonic's strong relationship with the aquarium, which includes earlier extensive refurbishing of a portion of the aquarium.

The Learning Centre features a circular main hub area with the lab room, toddlers' room, ocean room, coastal room and green room, branching off of it. The Hub Scenic, part of an introductory experience and presentation for visiting students, is at the core of the hub area. This scenic element, along with architectural detailing, special lighting and other embellishments, create the immersive experience of an ocean laboratory.

"A narrative about finding a missing turtle sets the stage for the story of the ocean lab," says Electrosonic project manag

UK - School Stage, the performing arts installation company offering exclusive provision to schools, colleges and universities, recently completed a project using Chauvet Professional fixtures to add colour and 'wow' factor to a multi-functional assembly hall in the newly built Lees Brook Community School in Derby.

The new school building was commissioned by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) because the school buildings were in poor shape, but no provision had been included for sound and lighting systems. Sensing this was a real opportunity to create the hall as a spectacular performance space, the school's former head teacher came out of retirement to project-manage the rebuild for the school.

Having sourced quotations and designs from other companies, the school governors awarded the contract to School Stage, who scrutinised the proposals and made sweeping changes to the bu

Turkey - When Konya was under consideration as one of the host cities for a future European Championships to be held in Turkey, construction of a brand new UEFA-compliant stadium was proposed.

While original plans set a capacity of around 33,000 seats, this was later upgraded to 42,276 seats - divided over two tiers, with an additional 50 VIP boxes - and the new facility, based in Selçuklu, will now provide the club Konyaspor KR with a state-of-the-art stadium for home matches.

Asimetrik, the Turkish-based distributors and AV system integrators, were awarded the contract to provide a network-based professional grandstand PA system, as well as broadcast infrastructure system, not only compatible with UEFA requirements (but also FIFA and IAFF). They also designed and supplied a PA/VA emergency evacuation system, C.I.S. infrastructure as well as full conference and visual presen

UK - Of all the buildings set within the historic cloisters of Oxford, one that really stands out is the Chapel at All Souls College - one of the city's oldest, whose origins date back to 1438-1442. Built by master mason Richard Chevynton, the original structure of the carved reredos (screen altarpiece) dates from around 1447 but the Chapel was almost completely rebuilt following its destruction by Puritans, followed later by a mid-19th century renovation, heavily influenced by Victorian design ideals.

The chapel contains 40 stalls, for the 40 Fellows of the original foundation and a high chapel roof - but the difference in reverberation times, and therefore audibility, between a full chapel scenario to an empty one was palpable. And this was causing major concern.

And so the facility's regular service specialists, City AV, were brought in to assist. The company, which has pro

The Netherlands - Apex has introduced its new, all-in-one conference room control system, Liviau R, which debuted at ISE 2015 and was named Best in Show by Installation magazine. Featuring a sleek, yet robust design Liviau R offers instant access to content and full control over your presentation as well as complete room control including lighting, video, audio and other automated services, all fully integrated and managed from the same platform.

Liviau's designers have focused on simplicity in addition to powerful functionality. The 10.1" touch interface is purposely limited to the information you require during meetings and presentations for as uncluttered a look as possible and thus minimum distraction during your event. The guided menu takes you easily through your meeting/presentation offering everything you need at your fingertips. Furthermore, the touch interf

Israel / The Netherlands - Kramer Electronics has announced its exclusive global distribution agreement with cyber-security manufacturer HighSecLabs (HSL). The migration to secure switching solutions in areas such as healthcare, finance, government, and command and control was a key theme for Kramer at ISE 2015.

The agreement lets Kramer incorporate HSL's secure signal-extending products in combination with Kramer's extensive AV switching product line. All products are backed by Kramer's seven-year warranty.

"Security is fast becoming a requirement for our global customers," said Aviv Ron, vice president of business development and strategy at Kramer. "With the HSL agreement, Kramer raises the bar in switching solutions, providing the ultimate in security, accuracy and reliability. This exclusive global distribution agreement with a fantastic innovator like HSL

UK - The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has confirmed the quality and standards of provision at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance following its review in November 2014.

A team of QAA reviewers visited Rose Bruford College and judged that its academic standards, the quality and enhancement of its student learning opportunities, and the quality of information about its learning opportunities all meet UK expectations.

The review identified a number of examples of good practice. These include the excellent arrangements for students to engage in professional practice, and the support given to staff in developing reflection and scholarship in their academic practice.

The review also highlighted the development and integration of learning technologies within the curriculum.

The review made a recommendation for improvement: for the College to imp

UK - The National Theatre's newly transformed Dorfman Theatre opened for the first time in its seated format last month with Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem. More seats than ever before are available for the show, following the regeneration of the theatre by architects Haworth Tompkins and theatre consultants Charcoalblue.

The improvements mean that an extra 27,000 people each year can gain access to what are often sold-out performances in the Dorfman, formerly the Cottesloe. In total, up to 130 more seats are available for each performance of The Hard Problem thanks to innovative seat designs and layout changes developed by Charcoalblue.

"By placing each row of the pit seating on an individual elevator, we have reinstated the original shallow rake format and made it possible to change from this to steep rake or flat floor quickly", says Alex Wardle from Charc

UK - Award winning theatre designer Lucy Osborne and lighting designer Emma Chapman of Studio Three Sixty, will join James Grieve, joint artistic director of Paines Plough, and Gavin Green of Charcoalblue theatre consultancy at the UK Theatre's Touring Symposium 2015 to discuss Paines Plough's award winning, pop-up Roundabout Theatre.

Commissioned by Paines Plough's artistic directors James Grieve and George Perrin, Roundabout is an intimate, dynamic and socially democratic space. Conceived as a portable venue, Roundabout enables the forward-looking theatre company to take their own brand of production anywhere they want and maintain their own strong production values without a large technical staff.

Designed and delivered by a collective headed up by Osborne and Chapman alongside special effects and lighting designer Howard Eaton, the technical and space planning consultation

UK - London-based creative technology expert Realtime Environment Systems Ltd (RES) has provided the media server know-how in collaboration with LM Productions and Mapp3D Producciones for a 'full dome' installation celebrating Mexican culture.

The temporary 25m white dome was constructed at Potter's Fields Park on London's Southbank for two weeks as part of the official Year of Mexico in the UK celebrations. Inside, the Mexican Tourism Board pop-up featured a huge projection mapped dome, where images of the country's rich cultural and natural heritage swirled above visitors' heads.

RES's Mark Calvert worked closely with LM Productions' Tim Kingsmill and Stephen Harvey to supply an Avolites Ai EX8 Pro 2 media server running the latest software - Ai V8 - which features the powerful new Autoblend feature. This feature uses a camera-based warp and blend tool set, allowing m

UK - Avolites provided lighting control to Paines Plough's Roundabout which won Theatre Building of the Year at the 2015 Stage Awards. The touring pop-up theatre features lighting controlled via an Avolites Sapphire Touch console running Titan Version 9.

The structure, described as "one of the most exciting new spaces in the country" was praised for its unique portability by the judges. Roundabout shares the honour with The Everyman in Liverpool.

The Roundabout is one of the first venues to utilise Titan Version 9, having had close involvement with the Avolites team. Lighting designers Emma Chapman and Howard Eaton specified Avolites for the installation, with Howard particularly keen on Titan for its Pixel Mapping ability.

Avolites technical director, JB Toby and lead software developer, Oliver Waits had close involvement with the Roundabout team, developing softw

USA - Northern Colorado Cowboy Church, or N3C for short, is located in a former restaurant building in Lucerne, Colorado. Although a large number of cowboy boots walk through the door every Sunday, N3C is open to everyone. The "Cowboy" in its name reflects the church's down-to-earth attitude. As one might guess, services at N3C are lively and contemporary, with high-energy music complementing colourful sermons.

Although the church originally moved into the converted restaurant with a home-grown PA-on-sticks, N3C aspired to something with much greater musical impact and intelligibility to cover its five-hundred-plus seats. Local integration firm Audio Video Colorado designed and installed a new system centred on two Danley Sound Labs SM-60F full-range loudspeakers.

"They had a lot of complaints about intelligibility and the overall quality of the sound of the hom

Canada - Winnipeg's striking new Canadian Museum for Human Rights explores the universal concept of human rights with a special emphasis on Canada.

Electrosonic was contracted to do the audio-visual design of the museum's 11 galleries, and subsequently the company directed the AV equipment installation working with local partner Advance Pro. The museum features theatres, interactive touchscreen stations, projections on a digital canvas and hundreds of video clips.

Eleven media partners were involved in the build-out requiring considerable technical coordination by Electrosonic. The company worked closely with SH Acoustics, LLC of Milford, Connecticut, on the museum's audio elements.

The project posed a number of challenges due to the building's architectural profile, which was designed by US architect Antoine Predock, working with Winnipeg's Architecture 49. Designed to move

Germany - After the operator of the Dresden theatre Wechselbad der Gefühle (Rollercoaster of Emotions) ceased operations in May 2014, TW.O GmbH took over the business of the operation, rebamed Boulevard Theatre Dresden. After a four-month renovation, operations in the listed building started again in September 2014.

In addition to the complete redesign of the auditorium, there were also heavy investments in the modernization of the stage and the entire theatre technology. Dutch manufacturer Alcons Audio pro-ribbon solutions were chosen for sound reinforcement.

"After many advisory discussions with sound engineers and other competent professionals, we organized test setups with different systems. The impressive performance of the Alcons systems and the professionalism of Event-net GmbH made it an easy decision", said Dan Becker, one of the directors of TW.O GmbH.

A

UK - Adlib has designed and installed the first Coda Audio ViRAY sound system in the UK into one of Liverpool's landmark venues - the Grade II-listed Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and one of the UK's premier arts and entertainment venues.

Adlib's installation director Roger Kirby and MD Andy Dockerty worked closely with Coda Audio UK's application engineer, Edgar Krueger, while the installation and system commissioning was co-ordinated by Adlib's system technician George Puttock working alongside Gilbert-Ash Limited, the main contractor for the on-going £13.8m refurbishment of the venue, which commenced in May 2014 and is set for completion in autumn 2015.

Roger Kirby, stated, "'Multi-functional' had to be right at the essence of any new system design for Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. Flexibility was also crucial, tog

Philippines - The Theatre at Solaire Resort and Casino has become the first venue in the Philippines to be equipped with a Meyer Sound Constellation acoustic system. Designed and engineered from the outset to combine architectural and electronic acoustics, this luxurious new performance venue has since scheduled a mix of international and local music acts as well as Broadway musicals like Chicago and Singin' In the Rain.

"With Constellation, we can offer the optimum acoustical environment for any type of performance," says Shax Siasoco, technical director for the venue. "We have the most advanced theatre in the Philippines."

The complete theatre technology package was designed and specified by Las Vegas and Hong Kong-based Coherent Design, with principals David Starck and Kevin Potts working in consultation with the Singapore office of Aedas,

USA - Theatre Projects collaborated on the design of the new Amphitheater Hot Shop at the Corning Museum of Glass, which celebrated the grand opening of the 100,000sq.ft Contemporary Art + Design Wing this past weekend.

From a simple beginning in 1951 as a two-room showcase with two employees and 2,000 pieces of artwork, the Corning Museum of Glass has continually expanded its physical footprint and cultural appeal into what is now a wide-reaching tourist attraction with a menagerie of stunning buildings dotted across a sprawling 10-acre campus, and a collection of more than 50,000 works of art.

Over the past 64 years, the museum has introduced many new and compelling attractions, drawing more and more visitors with each addition. Perhaps the most popular of those additions is the Hot Glass Show, where artisans guide audiences through the process of glassblowing, transforming

UK - The Oxford Union has for many years been a forum for high class debating, both competitively and otherwise. In fact the Debating Society's Chamber been described as "the world's most prestigious" - having hosted speakers including President Ronald Reagan, Mother Teresa, Senator Bobby Kennedy, Michael Jackson and the Dalai Lama.

The Union, founded in 1823, is Britain's second oldest Debating Union. The Chamber itself was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1878, and today it has a Grade II* listing. With a seating capacity of 450, for the first time it recently took delivery of a Harman Pro integrated sound system, provided by local multimedia specialists, City AV.

Their MD, Peter Gunn, has been providing the Chamber with temporary PA equipment for these high profile events for many years. But as Bursar Lindsey Warne points out, with its growing commercial use, and

UK - London's Sadler's Wells Theatre stages a richly diverse range of national and international collaborations. In 2013 Sadler's Wells embarked on a comprehensive upgrading of its infrastructure and technology, to improve both front of house and backstage environments in its 1568-seater main auditorium. Renowned theatre consultant Roger Spence was placed in charge of the project and engaged a team comprising designer Graham Large of Chapman BDSP, integrators Stage Electrics and lighting manufacturers GDS.

GDS was invited to supply a comprehensive, low-energy, LED house-lighting system to cater for virtually every functional and architectural demand. This was to include everything from panel lighting at the front of the circle, to row-end markers, emergency lighting, emergency exit signs, cleaners and house lights. In the initial stages of the project GDS worked closely with all

USA - Southern Adventist University, recognized as one of the top tier southern regional colleges, recently took delivery of a substantial sound-reinforcement system incorporating loudspeakers drawn from the catalogue of WorxAudio Technologies, a division of PreSonus Audio Electronics. Deployed in the Iles Physical Education Centre, the facility upgrade includes elements from WorxAudio's TrueLine and WaveSeries series.

Sound Ventures / Lunar Cinema of Knoxville, Tennessee, an AV production services and design firm dedicated to live events and select installations, was contracted to design and deploy the new sound system. Company president Dennis Farley discussed the project and his firm's decision to install WorxAudio loudspeaker systems.

"The Iles Physical Education Centre is a multi-purpose facility that is used for a wide range of activities," Farley explained. &q

Uruguay - The Sodre National Auditorium (Auditorio Nacional del Sodre) in Uruguay has chosen a self-powered Meyer Sound Mina line array loudspeaker system as the first permanent reinforcement system in the 1,900-capacity venue. The upgrade has ushered in a new era for the vibrant local arts community, which now has a performance space that shares high-quality reinforcement with Mina-equipped halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Festhalle in Germany.

In addition to the system's adaptability to the venue's diverse programming of rock, jazz, and pop artists, Mina was chosen for its compact size, which preserves the auditorium's classic architecture. The installation was directed by Cesar Lamschtein, senior audio engineer at the auditorium, who worked with Pablo Janssen, director at Montevideo-based Digital Audio Video.

"Our main goal was to design a system wi

UK - Two years on from laying the foundation stone, Derby Arena was officially opened to the public on Friday 20 March complete with a sizeable d&b audiotechnik T-Series sound system supplied by Orbital Sound. The new venue incorporates a 250m indoor cycle track - only the fifth of its kind to open in the UK - as well as being designed to stage large cultural events, exhibitions, product launches and conferences, with a seated capacity of up to 3500 and up to 5000 capacity seated and standing.

Derby Arena is a key addition to the city's sporting and cultural facilities, taking the lead as Derbyshire's largest venue. In its capacity as an event venue it comes under the responsibility of Derby LIVE, the Council's entertainment arm, which is responsible for managing all of the venues and outdoor events.

Headed up by production and technical manager Gareth Chell, Derby LIVE was gi

UK - After a competitive tender process The Broadsword Production Group is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a three-year contract to The Science Museum as a production supplier. With a diverse range of interactive galleries, located in the heart of South Kensington, the award-winning Science Museum offers a wow-factor backdrop for corporate events.

Matt Green, Broadsword's Sales Director, led the tender process and is excited about the opportunities at The Science Museum. He explains: "It is a bespoke venue, visually stunning, with a unique mix of the modern and traditional. Here at Broadsword, we offer the perfect mix of flexibility and innovation; the ability to design and adapt production solutions so that they work within unique environments. The Science Museum is definitely a space where we will be able to find new and interesting ways to stand out from t

USA - XS, the award-winning club at Encore at Wynn Las Vegas, has led Nightclub & Bar's Top 100 list for an unprecedented six years. Renowned nightclub lighting designer Steve Lieberman of SJ Lighting, the creative force behind many leading nightclub lighting designs, was engaged to work his magic on XS and give the club a new, more technology driven look. He met this challenge with a bold futuristic design that drew on the pixel mapping power of the Nexus Aw 7x7 warm white LED panels and ÉPIX Strip 2.0 LED strips from Chauvet Professional.

"I've enjoyed a good relationship with the team at XS," said Lieberman. "When XS managing partner Jesse Waits announced that they were ready to take the next step at the club in terms of lighting, we put our heads together to come up with a state-of-the-art concept. They wanted to incorporate newer technology into

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