UK - Ambersphere Solutions will be running free training sessions on the dot2, MA Lighting's new console designed for smaller and mid-sized projects and venues, during PLASA Focus Glasgow at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC).

The sessions will take place in the Morar and Ness rooms at the SECC on Wednesday 20th January 2016 at 11am, 2pm and 4:30pm and on Thursday 21st January 2016 at 10am and 1pm. Upon completion of the 90 minute session participants will be well on the way to running their first show on the dot2 lighting console.

The 90-minute intro sessions will cover all the basic operational features of the dot2 console including an overview of the whole dot2 product range, before diving into controlling fixtures, creating pre-sets and cue lists. Building chases, creating and using effects, managing speed and time, and a host of other features will als

Austria - Since 1982, the Kulturhaus (culture house) Dornbirn, Austria is a popular event centre for the entire Vorarlberg region. After an extensive planning and implementation phase, which was administered already in 2013 by the company Tonplan from Dornbirn, the final step of the installation of an Alcons sound system in the main hall of the cultural centre took place in 2015.

The sound department of the Kulturhaus Dornbirn, under the direction of Thomas Bischofberger, installed a sound system for the main stalls area consisting of four Alcons QR24 line-source columns (2x 12" pro-ribbon tweeter, 4x 6.5" woofer), which is particularly suitable for installations in difficult acoustic environments.

As centrefill four pieces Alcons LR7 micro line-array (4" pro-ribbon tweeter, 1x 6.5" woofer) and an Alcons VR12 (6" pro-ribbon tweeter, 1x 12" woofe

UK - GSA at the University of Surrey is to present a one-day symposium Light Mapping on 13 January 2016 at The Ivy Arts Centre, Stag Hill Campus, Guildford. GU2 7XH.

This event which is in association with White Light, Richmond Theatre and ETC and supported by ABTT and ALD includes demonstrations, events and workshops. These include: Demonstrations of how to run pixel mapping through lights. [am and pm sessions]; The recreation (on a much smaller scale) the epic rig of Parcans that were used for the Kayne West Glastonbury event; Talk and Q & A with Fin Ross (Olivier award winning video designer for Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time); A panel discussion and Q & A with experts on video and lighting design and how they work together.

Visit to register your interest at www.surrey.ac.uk/arts/theatre/light-mapping

GSA has built an international reputat

USA - Following an award-winning 2015, concert lighting company Bandit Lites rounded out the year with its annual angel tree tradition and warm wishes to all its clients and Bandit Family.

"This has truly been a landmark year for Bandit," said chair Michael T. Strickland. "From a wildly successful festival season, winning Lighting Company of the Year, to millions blown away by tremendous lighting; we could not have done it without all the support of our world class employees, our loyal clients, and friends throughout the industry."

In gratitude for all good fortune Bandit has experienced, the world headquarters in Knoxville looked for a way to pay it forward to those in need. Now, what originally started as a toy drive at the annual holiday party more than 20 years ago has grown into a delivery of goods ranging from toothbrushes to toys to a local charity

China - Cantopop singer and songwriter, Hins Cheung, recently kicked off his Live in Passion tour at Guangzhou Gymnasium with the help of a monitor mixing system comprising Allen & Heath's new dLive and ME personal monitor mixing systems.

Hong Kong production company, A Team Plus, managed audio for the tour, selecting a dLive S5000 Control Surface and DM64 MixRack, and ME monitor system provided by Allen & Heath's Chinese distributor, EZPro.

"Due to the size of the band, there is 64 inputs to manage. Fortunately, dLive's control surface is very user-friendly and intuitive. Two screens on the surface provide a fantastic overview of what's going on, and around the screens there are some physical knobs for compressor, EQ, and gate, which are extremely helpful when I mix. I can operate very quickly thanks to the Harmony UI, which integrates screen and wrap-around control,&q

Europe - Lighting designer Amy Barnett approached Entec to provide a lighting equipment package for the recent European tour by Chris Norman. It was the first time she'd worked with the west London based lighting rental specialists which she chose because, "after a few initial phone conversations I had complete confidence in the company to deliver what I needed, and they were very helpful and friendly".

Project manager Noreen O'Riordan commented: "It was actually our second tour with Chris Norman as a supplier and our first working with Amy, which we found really interesting. We love to see new and up-coming LDs doing well, and share our many years of knowledge and experience in assistance. We will all be hearing a lot more of Amy."

Chris Norman initially found fame in the 1970s with UK soft rock band Smokie, known for their many hits and distinctive thre

Canada / Japan - Parasol Systems has announced that its patented dynamic rigging system, the ACS (Autonomous Carrier System) will be used for the first time at a live event this month in Tokyo, Japan.

The ACS system was first developed as a prototype in 2006, and functions much like a train on tracks. The ACS has 'Paracarts' which move intelligently, wirelessly, and independently along a predetermined track. Mounting moving lights and lasers onto the moving Paracarts allows lighting designers to create never been seen before visual effects. Utilising precision robotics technologies, the Paracarts are always in the right place at the right time.

This is not just the debut for the Parasol ACS System, but also for the Rizin Fighting Federation, a new global MMA promotion designed to feature the best MMA fighters at one world-wide tournament. This premier event is called the Riz

USA - With the newly renovated Frederick P. Rose Hall opening in mid-December, Jazz at Lincoln Centre (JALC) now features Meyer Sound systems in every performance space at the prestigious complex, including a Leopard linear sound reinforcement system in the Rose Theatre, a Constellation acoustic system in the Appel Room, and an Ultra Series loudspeaker system in Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola.

Visitors can also experience Meyer Sound technology throughout JALC's stunningly redesigned public spaces, including the Mica & Ahmet Ertegun Atrium and the Ertegun Hall of Fame. The mission of JALC is to entertain, enrich, and expand a global community for jazz through performance, education, and advocacy. Sound is at the heart of the company's commitment to providing the highest quality artistic and audience experience.

Sound Associates of New York led the coordination of all Meyer Sound sys

Poland - Specialist integrator, SLX has completed the design and installation of a state-of-the-art sound system for the new Tychy Municipal Stadium. Located in the city of Tychy, the 15,300 capacity venue is one of the finest sports facilities in the southern Polish region of Silesia.

Home to the football team GKS Tychy, the new stadium has been designed to meet the requirements of UEFA and FIFA and as a true multifunctional venue for concerts, cultural and artistic events, fairs and conferences. In addition to the main sports arena, with six commentary positions, the site comprises restaurants, conference rooms, two TV studios, VIP lounges and impressive amenities for players and athletes. The stadium not only creates a striking new landmark, but is intended to become a showcase for the city.

For the main arena sound system, SLX designed a system using 68 Community R Serie

Eagles Return - Eagles Of Death Metal have announced the dates for their postponed European tour - including a return to Paris. The American rock band was performing at the city's Bataclan venue when it was attacked by gunmen on 13 November during coordinated terror attacks. The band will perform at the Olympia Theatre in Paris on 16 February.

Announcing the new tour dates, the band said: "Unfortunately, the Bataclan Theatre will not be open again in time for the band's return on this tour." The tour, rescheduled due to the massacre, has been renamed Nos Amis (Our Friends). Fans who were at the Bataclan on the tragic night will be given free tickets.

Power Struggle - Madonna has issued a rebuke after the power was cut during her encore at Glasgow's Hydro venue. The singer left the stage at the end of her Rebel Heart tour concert on Sunday. When she returned

UK - Close to You - Bacharach Reimagined, is a magical journey through over 30 of Burt Bacharach's classic hits and features a cast of talented actor-musicians in a West End Show.

Tasked with supplying audio production were Stage Sound Services who, having been introduced to the world of KV2 Audio by noted sound designer Richard Brooker, had no hesitation in supplying a complete KV2 Audio solution.

Originally running in the Mernier Chocolate Factory, London before transitioning to the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly, the sound design team of Richard Brooker and associate Tom Marshall opted to provide the performers with conventional loudspeaker monitoring as opposed to IEM. Because the action moves around the stage floor mounted monitoring was not an option as it would impact on audience sightlines and not allow enough flexibility to follow the actors on their journey

UK - Yes Events has strengthened its video offering with a significant investment in a 3.9mm ProLights video wall, supplied by the specialist video sales division of distributor, A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd.

The new screen comprises 90 panels of ProLights Ultra 3+ along with appropriate rigging and processing. Ultra 3+ is the latest LED screen solution from the ProLights brand, which is distributed exclusively in the UK by AC-ET's video division.

Ultra 3+ boasts black-faced SMD LEDs for amazing contrast and colour consistency across panels. Each panel has an auto-calibrate facility allowing 'mix and match' of tiles from different batches or run times, to make seamless screens.

Tom Chennells, production director for Yes Events, says this purchase is a logical next step for the company. "Video is becoming an ever increasing part of our offering here at

UK - The hit musical and family favourite, A Christmas Carol, is arguably the indisputable Christmas classic. Charles Dickens' evocative tale, with its exuberant dance sequences and magnificent settings recreating streets, graveyards and buildings of 19th century London, excites and appeals to audiences of all ages.

Tasked with bringing the tale of Christmas to life at Blackpool's 3,000-capacity Opera House - a venue which also boasts one of Europe's largest stages - Arranpaul's Up & Coming LD, Oliver Wilkinson opted to include a selection of six Rogue R1 Spots and 16 Q-Wash 560Z-LED moving wash fixtures from Chauvet Professional, as well as Chauvet DJ PiXPars into his lighting design.

"The fixture plot I created allowed me to light any area of the stage with Chauvet's R1 Spots, PiXPars and 560Zs," said Wilkinson, who also handled video and audio for the pro

USA - Chroma-Q Color Force 12 multi-purpose LED fixtures were recently specified by lighting sales and production company, E2i Design, for its seasonal White Christmas show at Michigan's Brighton High School.

E2i Design's Josh Holowicki passionately supports the school's theatre in a number of ways - as chairman of the board of directors, as volunteer technical director and scenic designer, and as producer. As the technical director, he's responsible for all audio, video and lighting.

Irving Berlin's White Christmas is a classic holiday show, based on the famous movie. It follows an army private and captain who were stationed in Europe during WW2 in 1944. They are performers and entertainers who do their best to keep up the spirits of the 151st division during the holidays. The show ran on the first two weekends of December 2015 at the school's 900-capacity Bri

USA - Since premiering as an unassuming rave back in 1997 in LA, the adult playground that is today's Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) has spread across the U.S. and indeed the world.

Orlando has hosted its own version since 2011 and LD Steve Lieberman has been lighting it ever since. This year, he designed a remarkable megastructure for the Circuit Grounds stage plus the accompanying lighting scheme that was just as impressive, teaming Elation Platinum Spot 35 Pro moving heads with Colour Chorus LED strip lights, among other Elation gear and other lighting. Production was by AG Production Services.

Produced by Insomniac Events, the fifth incarnation of EDC Orlando took place at Tinker Field on 6 and 7 November with three different stages hosting 50 DJs, among them headliners Tiesto, Kaskade and Calvin Harris.

The combination of Platinum Spot 35 Pro's and Colour Chorus 72's

USA - When the time came for Cornerstone Church in San Antonio to go digital in its 4,700-seat sanctuary, there were three targets that had to be hit: Freedom for the ministers' and musicians' visions, financial responsibility for proper stewardship, and foundational planning for the future. With a church that ministers to 20,000 members locally and reaches every country on the planet, the genesis of where that ministering signal starts is crucial to the success of everything that follows.

Planning the renovation of the church's audio system covered a period of a year and a half and was completed in late summer with the installation of two new DiGiCo mixing consoles: the SD5 at FOH and the SD10 for monitors. These desks act as the hub of a new fibre-based signal transport system that has transformed the church's signal flow and vastly improved the sonic quality of both live and

Germany - Reporting an extraordinarily successful year in the Middle East, Lawo has seen its pioneering IP-based broadcast production video, audio and control technologies and systems adopted by the region's leading TV and radio broadcasters, including installations in Qatar, Jordan and Oman.

Installations across the region reflect the growing number and size of broadcast installations in the region's Arab territories, as well as their increasingly demanding workflow requirements. Lawo's involvement is also an indication of the continued success of the German company's developments in TV and radio broadcast production. It also demonstrates that broadcasters in this expanding and technically demanding market are ready to adopt new approaches and future-facing technologies, and have found a strong partner in Lawo.

"We are becoming more and more recognized in the Middle Ea

UK - Manchester based dbn Lighting has returned to the Store Street car park beneath the arches at Manchester's Piccadilly station for the current Warehouse Project season, with a new lighting and visual design. The venue layout is essentially the same as for previous seasons, however the brief to dbn's project manager Pete Robinson was to give it a new vibe with a fresh design.

The main room stage still has a video truss at the back, but forward of that, Pete transformed the look and feel of the stage space by installing a 10m diameter half circle of trussing (open ends downstage) which fits really snugly into the width. It's also raked to harmonize it with the curvature of the arch. This has replaced the previous year's overhead trusses that were straight. Further segments of curved trussing have been flown above the dancefloor.

While the section over the stage is effectiv

USA - Bands often inspire one another musically, but on some occasions their power of persuasion extends into the realm of lighting too. Such was the case recently on the popular coast-to-coast US tour co-headlined by post-hardcore heavies Senses Fail and Silverstein that featured a stage- transforming rig created by Squeek Lights using Chauvet Professional fixtures.

Prior to signing up for this joint venture, Senses Fail had never toured with their own light show before; though they certainly performed with some killer rigs on the Taste of Chaos Tour. Still when the band hooked up with Silverstein, they were lighting newcomers. After talking to their touring partners however, Sense Fail had a change of heart and decided that the time had come to engage their fans with lighting.

For their part, Silverstein felt comfortable recommending that their punk rock partners leap into

UK - A scalable QSC Q-Sys digital audio network has been installed at London's Excel Exhibition Centre by experienced installation specialists Paul Todd and Eddie Thomas of SSE Audio. Based around a Core 1100 processor, the new QSC system replaces Excel's ageing background music system, and is used in conjunction with an existing Ateis voice alarm. All of the QSC equipment was provided by Shure Distribution UK.

Having struggled with the daily management of the previous system, Excel gave SSE a brief to create a fully redundant network with a bespoke, user-friendly graphical user interface. Q-Sys has been integrated into Excel's existing fibre network ring, and now distributes up to 256 x 256 digital audio channels from 18 racks, each with fibre network connectivity and full redundancy.

Excel is one of London's largest exhibition centres, offering a total of 100,000sq.m of us

UK - A.C. Video, a division of A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) Ltd, has been appointed as the exclusive UK distributor for Draper Projection Group's new StageScreen and FocalPoint projector screen solutions - bolstering the company's line-up of leading-brand complementary video system technologies.

AC-ET has been a reseller for Draper's popular Ultimate Folding Screen systems for three years, but following the introduction of the StageScreen and FocalPoint systems, Draper appointed the company as their exclusive distributor for these flagship product ranges, due to the A.C. Video division's specialist knowledge, expertise and infrastructure in place to support their brand.

Based in North America, Draper has been manufacturing quality projection screens since 1957. Well-known for their innovation and build quality, Draper produces a wide range of manual and motorised

USA - Syncrolite, LLC and Ballantyne Strong Inc. announced that the assets associated with Ballantyne Strong's lighting business have been sold to Syncrolite. With effect from 21 December 2015, Syncrolite will assume all operations, sales and support associated with the well-known family of followspots.

The Super Trouper and Gladiator products will now be manufactured at Syncrolite's headquarters along with the Skytracker family of outdoor advertising and architectural lighting products. Strong product support and repairs will be provided by Syncrolite's team of Xenon lighting experts while parts and replacement lamps will be shipped from their own centrally located facility in Dallas, TX.

"The Strong name is familiar to everyone in the entertainment lighting industry and Syncrolite is proud to be in a position to carry that tradition forward and take Strong lighting pr

UK - The team at LSiOnline is taking a break for the Christmas holidays and will be back with more industry news on 4 January 2016.

From all of us at PLASA Media, a thank you to all our readers around the world for your support through 2015, and we wish you all a very happy holiday season and a prosperous new year.

See you in 2016!

Best wishes from Lee, Claire, Andrew, Greg, Sheila & Sonja . . .

USA - Motion control systems manufacturer Kinesys is opening the doors and welcoming guests to its dedicated training facility in Atlanta, Georgia, in an event that will run from 25-28 January 2016, offering both product awareness and free operator training for those who want to know more about automated rigging for the entertainment industry.

This event has been designed to cover the operation and implementation of Kinesys equipment and will showcase a broad range of products that will appeal to individuals and companies involved in the increasingly popular discipline of automation / motion control.

The invitation is open to lighting and show designers, automation operators, rental suppliers and rigging service providers - anyone with an interest in this dynamic element of modern show production.

The training workshop will provide structured learning in the theory, progr

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