UK - Strand Lighting's latest software promises "a completely new look and feel". Command operations are faster, simpler and more intuitive, says the company. Displays are more informative and flexible and the entire operator experience "will change the minute users begin to work with the software".

Users of the original Light Palette V6 and V8 consoles will recognise the heritage of this software with its familiar command line interface.

Version 10 builds on the strengths of Strand's years of experience in lighting control and improves thepower of moving light programming with its Universal Attribute Control.

Features in this release include full command line programming, enhanced colour control including gel manufacturers' colour libraries, Smart touring options with magic update, directive updates and fixture offset.

"We now have partial show lo

UK - Paul Cox, David Stewart and Matthew Pitman have joined Martin UK.

Paul Cox, 51 joins Martin in the capacity of architectural lighting consultant with more than 25 years in architectural sales experience, and moves from Kreon Architectural Lighting, where he held the position of general manager of UK operations.

"Martin has a great architectural product line - second to none. There is no one else out there with the quality or range," says Cox. "We really have products that make people's jaws drop, like the smartMAC for example. It looks good and does what it says, and people just love it. I am really looking forward to the coming challenges."

David Stewart, who joins Martin as lighting consultant in the Show Segment liaising with end clients, has many years experience working on corporate and live events, including the Montreux Jazz Festival, Oasis UK

UK - Switched on London, the capital's festival of light running from 7-14 February and coinciding with ARC08 will include the Breathing Trees 2 project. This is a revival of a site-specific installation conceived by lighting artist Laurent Louyer and first shown in Geneva.

Inspired by the resemblance of two beech trees to a pair of lungs, Laurent developed his design for the trees to appear through light and colour to be 'breathing', accompanied on site by a synchronised breathing soundscape.

In Geneva the trees were lit by 42 RGB LED fixtures supplied by Look4ideas, and controlled by a single-universe Pharos Lighting Playback Controller (LPC1) which managed the synchronising of the audio effect, as well as time-of-day, special occasion and astronomical triggers for the light show.

For the London installation, a pair of plane trees in Potter's Field Park has b

Ireland - LED Group has confirmed the acquisition of lighting design and consultancy business DLDP which is directed by Paul Donegan.

Donegan and his team will manage all new product design and development and will also continue to provide a lighting design and consultancy service. This new company is called onepointtwo.

Donegan has experience in all areas of the lighting arena with a career spanning 22 years. He is a member of the Society of Light and Lighting, the Institute of Lighting Engineers and holds a Master of Science degree in The Built Environment (Light & Lighting) from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He has lectured on retail lighting at Griffith College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Design and architectural lighting at University College Dublin.

onepointtwo offers architects, designers and engineers "a comprehensive and holist

UK - Smash hit musical Mamma Mia! has marked the return of Smoke Factory to the West End, with exclusive use of its fog and haze products. Lighting Partners, the UK distributor for Smoke Factory, worked with Smoke Factory's German HQ, PRG Europe and the Mamma Mia! London production team, swapping 11 machines for eight Tour Hazer IIs and three Data II fog machines.

The Tour Hazer II is a 1600W hazer built into an Amptown flightcase; the Data II is a 2600W high emission fog machine; both units are DMX-controlled and have recently obtained BGV-C1 certification from the German authorities to show that the machines, the fluid and the fog they produce have no adverse health effects.

David Morgan of Lighting Partners said: "Since taking on the Smoke Factory distributorship in 2007 we have worked hard to re-establish the brand in the UK. This tie-up with one of the

USA - Part of the new expansion of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, FL is the WonderWall, a $2 million interactive water fountain. Fuelling the fountain with content are eight High End Systems Axon media servers. Axon is a rack-mount unit featuring the DL.2 graphics engine, allowing users to feed media content to their own output device.

Luxious Lighting's Andrew Wilder of Los Angeles programmed the display using a Wholehog 3 and Hog 3PC. "I used all stock library content that comes with Axon, except for the Hard Rock Seminole logo," Wilder explains. "I also combined it with a satellite music video feed that runs in the casino. The Axons are housed in a small room, behind the fountain, set up in two rows of four, with projectors. I've mapped the Axon content into a sphere and they're rear-projecting."

The Wholehog 3 not only controls the cont

USA - Gopher Stage Lighting has appointed Karin Lindquist as architectural lighting sales manager.

Lindquist brings over 20 years of sales experience in the electrical distribution industry working with architects, contractors and owners. She has been involved in the design and sale of numerous specialty lighting products for casinos, themed restaurants and retail venues. She was also one of the first in the Midwest region to promote Color Kinetics LED lighting in the architectural marketplace.

Gopher Stage Lighting provides lighting, control systems, technical services and stage draperies and rigging throughout the upper Midwest.

(Jim Evans)

USA - Alpha One Technology's new Falcon 6000 and the existing Falcon 7k xenon lights played key positions in this year's Super-Bowl XLII Halftime Show. Premiering at the big event, the Falcon 6000 is a compact indoor/outdoor, DMX controlled, xenon fixture equipped with douser, pan-and-tilt movement, electronic and mechanical dimmer, electronic and mechanical strobe, zoom and integrated electronic power supply. The next release of the Falcon 6000 will include a CMY+1 colour changer, with extra scrolls for special effects.

"Finally, a versatile xenon light designed especially for both floor and inverted use," states Emmy Award winning lighting designer Bob Dickinson. "Its exceptional output, comparable to that of the 7k at a third the size and weight with one-third the power consumption, is a great advancement in xenon technology. I am looking forward to using A&O's

The Netherlands - A unique training course held at Spotrental's Netherlands premises has boosted the capacity of the American manufacturer Strong to service its followspot products in Europe. This increases the availability of trained technicians able to service such highly-used Strong brands as the Xenon Super Trouper and Gladiator.

The course, hosted by Spotrental, the largest stockist of Strong products in Europe and one of the manufacturer's official European distributors, was attended by participants from the UK, Holland and Greece, as well as US-based experts from Strong itself.

The course is the latest in a developing programme of training that will be extended to cover Australasia, The Caribbean, Central and South America and South Africa in the next 18 months."We started the scheme in 2005 when we realised that no-one was providing this training," says Jack

UK - The Sundial Theatre in Cirencester has upgraded its Robe moving light stock with the addition of four Robe ColorWash 750 AT Tungsten fixtures. The theatre is a busy producing and receiving house, and the fixtures - supplied through Bath-based Enlightened Lighting - immediately went into action for the opening date of comedian Michael McIntyre's UK tour.

The new lights were specified by Sundial technical manager Andy Webb, who wanted a warm colour temperature fixture to blend in with the generic rig and to contrast with their discharge sources. "It was a logical step. In the past, to deal with the need for tungsten washes, we have had to hire ColorWash 575E ATs and use the CTO correction."

For the McIntyre show, the ColorWash 750 AT Tungstens were used to up-light 4 sections of gauze dressing the stage space.

Webb will be utilising these, plus eight more, on Di

USA - Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions, the new entity formed by Philips' acquisition of Color Kinetics, is continuing to expand its EssentialWhite series with the launch of two new LED luminaires for common interior applications. The luminaires will debut at the ARC Show, 11-13 February, at the Business Design Centre in London, UK (stand M20).

The EssentialWhite series is designed to deliver the inherent advantages of LED sources for common white light applications that don't require sophisticated control systems. The product series incorporates Philips' knowledge of LED technology, efficient LED drivers, mechanical and thermal engineering, optics and binning management - providing "easy-to-use LED solutions that meet specifier-grade standards". In line with a growing number of standards and mandates, the products comply with the California Energy Commission's 2

USA - ShowPro provided over 1,000 high resolution Element Lab VersaTubes for the 50th annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on 10 February.

The VersaTubes are part of a design collaboration between Emmy award winning lighting designer Bob Dickinson and Scenic Artist Brian Stonestreet. Mounted into moving set pieces that open and close to reveal performance areas on the stage, the configuration of the VersaTubes takes advantage of, not only the point source effect of the tubes, but also reflected light due to the finish on the set pieces, says ShowPro.

The final product is a fascinating combination of high-tech digital lighting and classic theatrical light box effects. "It's great to see such a creative and impactful use of LED display on this show" says company president David Smith. "This further exemplifies the visual convergence of video a

UK - Working in close consultation with designer Andy Liddle, Hawthorns provided the extensive lighting rig for the launch of the new Liverpool Echo Arena, combined with the celebrations of Liverpool's new status as European City of Culture 2008.

The moving lights were almost entirely sourced from the Clay Paky Alpha range, comprising 12 of Hawthorn's Alpha Profile 1200s, 32 Alpha Spot 575 HPEs, 24 Alpha Wash 1200s and 24 Alpha Wash 575s. On top of these, the rig housed the new Alpha 300 range, with 24 HPEs and 12 Wash lights.

Also featured for effect were 24 GLP Impression LED moving heads. These units were even rigged to the automated 45ft cherry pickers just to make things more interesting. The arena side walls were lit with IPIX Big Boy LED floods.

The main set piece (an eight-storey building site scaffolding) was back lit with Studio Due City Colours, while each bay of

USA - Boston-based Lightspace Corporation, a developer of interactive entertainment and display technology, has announced the appointment of Lee Engineering as its UK distributor.

The Lightspace range comprises three systems - Lightspace Play; Lightspace Design and Lightspace Dance - based on an interactive floor/wall system using 400 sq.mm low-res LED tiles. Each tile contains 4 x 200sq.mm RGB pixels and four pressure sensors, through which the user can interact with the Lightspace surface.

Lee Engineering directors Phil Leedal and Ian Nelson state that the technology fits perfectly within their Education and Special Needs portfolio - a key market for the Lancaster-based company; but there are also systems specific to the entertainment and architectural markets.

(Jim Evans)

USA - The show may have been called Clash of the Choirs but it was all sweet music with the grandMA controlling the lighting for the new NBC series. The show featured five music celebrities - Nick Lachey, Patti LaBelle, Blake Shelton, Michael Bolton and Kelly Rowland -who assembled amateur choirs in their hometowns.

The choirs performed on four consecutive nights in the week leading up to Christmas with viewers eliminating groups as the nights wore on. Lachey's Cincinnati-based choir emerged the winner taking home $250,000 for the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Lighting designer Greg Brunton was challenged to light more than 40 songs during the course of the shows. "We knew what songs would be performed from night to night only one hour before the show because we didn't know which choirs would be moving on," he explains. "So we had to reformat cues each

UK - Technicians at the Royal Albert Hall will no longer have to don a safety harness and be hoisted 9ft into the air to focus luminaires, thanks to the safe thinking of senior technical manager Luke Manning, who has replaced conventionals with moving lights, including ETC Source Four Revolutions.

Manning reports: "The principal reason we've upgraded all our generic heads to intelligent units is for health and safety reasons. The whole industry has a duty to improve working conditions and to reduce the risk of accidents wherever possible."

ETC's luminaires product manager Tom Littrell adds: "The Source Four is the most efficient tungsten luminaire for entertainment, given its high performance lamp and a dichroic ellipsoidal reflector which pushes more light out of the front and heat out of the back. This means a 750W Source Four is as bright as a 1200W unit with

World - American singer/songwriter and ex-No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani toured the world on her The Sweet Escape tour, a critically acclaimed eclectic show described as "part pep rally, part Broadway musical" with special acts and plenty of costume changes. Lighting design was by Butch Allen who chose a Martin package of 68 MAC 2000 Washes and 13 MAC 2000 Profiles to light the show all under control of a Martin Maxxyz lighting console.

Lighting director was Jesse Blevins, who also helped with lighting programming and toured with the show. He commented on the decision to go with Martin MACs: "Due to the size of the LED walls and our sub-grid (half of the dates were shed gigs) the lights had to be small enough to fit into some pretty tight spaces but still bright enough to compete with all of the video content.

"The 2K Wash was a nice fit. It also h

UK - White Light is showing products of use to architectural, event and retail lighting designers at The ARC Show 2008 in London this week.

The exclusive UK distributor for a wide range of product manufacturers from around the world, White Light's stand features images of a number of products of interest to those working in these fields of lighting, from LSC in Australia, LDDE in Austria, ELC in the Netherlands and Wireless Solutions in Sweden.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Stage Electrics is supplying all lighting and electrics for the London production of Hairspray, currently playing at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. The show recently made West End history by receiving 11 Olivier Award nominations, more than any other show in the ceremony's history. The show is produced by Stage Entertainment and members of the original Broadway producing team.

Over 200 ETC Source 4's are being supplied to the UK production together with 15 VL2000 washes, six of the new VL2500 spots, 24 MAC 2000 profiles, 10 MAC 2000 performance and over 100 Rainbow Pro scrollers.

Flexibility comes from Wybron Colour Mixing CXI 'IT' Scrollers, 16 of which are employed on the show. This new product features Wybrons 'Infotrace' system allowing active feedback of all parameters of the scroller including heat, gel degradation, voltage sensing and even an aperture light s

Russia - Aziz Adilkhodjaev has joined the Avolites technical sales team. Uzbekistan born, a fluent Russian speaker and with a background in engineering, mobile telecoms and business administration, he will take care of technical support and customer care for Russia and the CIS. His duties at Avolites also include specialising in media server technology and its integration with their range of consoles, and he will also manage all of Avolites' digital assets including photo and video archives, product and training movies.

Avolites' Steve Warren says, "Aziz has already proved his value to the company in dealing with the Russian speaking countries. Having also lived there, he's familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the financial and economic systems and dealings which is a great asset."

Adilkhodjaev also has some experience and familiarity with architectural lighting as hi

UK - An elegant Anolis LED lighting installation is now in place highlighting the newly renovated tower of St Stephen's Church in Bath.

The scheme was designed and specified by Kieran Sturrock of locally based Enlightened Lighting, who also managed and installed the project for the vicar, the Reverend Jonathan Lloyd.

The old tower had previously been lit somewhat prosaically with white floodlights, so when the 18-month tower restoration scheme got underway, Lloyd took the radical step of applying to Bath & North East Somerset City Council to fund a new and contemporary lighting design.

The picturesque church was designed and built by local architect James Wilson in 1845, and the tower - always a controversial structural feature - was completed in 1847. St Stephen's is located on Lansdown Hill, one of the highest points around Bath, with a commanding view of the city and the

USA - The Up Close and Personal Tour is a star-studded concert headlined by 18 year old R&B artist Chris Brown. Lighting designer Daunte Kenner worked alongside Brown who wanted to create a futuristic look to the show. Kenner explains, "For Chris the LED look is 'in' and he insisted he wanted to use High End's new Showgun to create a young trendy vibe."

Kenner continues: "The PixelLine 1044 is the perfect complement to the LED ring on the Showgun - and its high powered output and colour-mixing capabilities could generate vibrant colour matches to Chris and his crew's stage outfits."

The PixelLines were attached at various points vertically to the set and lit up frosted Plexi Panels - creating a forever changing backdrop of colours. 16 PixelArc Rs spiced up the B stage: a 12ft tall stage that pitches 60° and rotates 360°.

Kenner comments, &q

UK - Nitelites, the Newcastle-based PA company specialising in sound, lighting and staging is replacing its entire hire stock of amplifiers with 44 Crown I-Tech 8000s as part of an overall upgrade of its inventory.

Director, Jamie Moore explains: "Over the past two years we have been systematically refining our entire hire stock to ensure it is all of the highest calibre. When it came to amps, we wanted something of superior quality - Crown was exactly what we were looking for.

"As the most powerful of the I-Tech series, it made sense to go for 8000s to give us greatest flexibility; our systems are used in festivals, touring and also classical concerts. They sound great, they're easy to programme, very efficient with low power consumption and particularly important to us is their compatibility with the JBL Vertec line array we have."

(Jim Evans)

UK - Texas-based manufacturer High End Systems (HES) and UK-based digital solutions specialist Projected Image Digital (PID) have announced a series of free product technical training sessions running from 31 March - 4 April in London.

"The five-day session, consisting of three modules, will provide a hands-on, intense learning environment on some of today's leading consoles, lighting fixtures and digital lighting products. HES specialists from both the US and Europe will provide training," the companies say.

The training sessions will be held at PID's Headquarters, The Light Box, 111 Power Road, Chiswick, London W4 5PY, with classes running each day 9.30am to 5.30pm. Participants can register for individual modules, or for all three. Refreshments and a light lunch will be provided, along with writing materials and course handouts.

The modules are as follows:
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