Australia - The world's largest permanent interactive light display, named Luminous at Darling Quarter, has been turned on in Sydney, Australia.

Luminous at Darling Quarter represents an important investment in green digital art by the Darling Quarter joint stakeholders, Lend Lease, Commonwealth Bank and Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority.

The project, which has taken 12 months to complete, establishes Darling Harbour's vibrant new precinct - Darling Quarter, as the new face of digital arts in Australia.

Bruce Ramus, creator of Luminous at Darling Quarter stated, "The digital façade adds radiance and playfulness to the precinct and brings people together in the spirit of creating light and art for others to enjoy."

Ramus says Luminous at Darling Quarter has been the collaborative effort of many, resulting in a unique approach to urban space that aligns public ar

Italy - Scala has announced the installation of two large LED walls at Naples International Airport, executed by Scala certified partner Konvergence. Capodichino Airport in Naples welcomes 5.7m travellers annually.

In order to enhance the customer experience at the airport, the airport management company Gesac decided recently to install two LED walls, of 3m by 4m each, for marketing purposes. These impressive screens run on Scala software and now serve as the core element for the communication and advertising strategy at the airport.

"Konvergence has created an eye-catching digital installation that immediately draws the attention of everyone in the departure hall of Naples Airport," states Damon Crowhurst, senior director, Scala EMEA. "An airport is open and operational 24/7 and365 days a year. That means that the proven stability and perfect playback quality

UK - Using 36 20K Barco HD projectors, provided by XL Video UK, d3 provided the video mapping and playback of video onto the façade of Buckingham Palace during Monday evening's Jubilee Concert. d3's advanced projection simulation toolkit, together with d3 Technologies' experience in projection mapping projects around the globe, successfully delivered this element of the show in conjunction with show designer Durham Marenghi, and further architectural lighting provided by supplier Neg Earth.

A laser scanner was used to create a highly accurate 3D model of the building, and then prepared by 3D modeler and artist Nils Porrmann in order to set up the d3 stage, providing Treatment Studio with a content template to work on. Sam Pattinson, creative director of Treatment Studio, commissioned a number of animators to create the content. Pattinson has a long-standing relationship with d3

South Africa - For the fourth consecutive year, AV Unlimited were commissioned by VWV as the preferred technical supplier for the SAB Marketing Sales and Distributors Conference. This annual event was held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

An estimated 1 600 people, all South African Breweries internal staff, attended the convention, business sessions and the new brand experience - a networking area where delegates gather after various sessions. Here all SAB brands were displayed in an exhibition-type fashion and complemented with lighting and background music.

AV Unlimited arrived in Cape Town on Sunday and the set up had to be complete by Wednesday for rehearsals. The event was hosted on Thursday and Friday.

Guillaume Ducray, joint partner at AV Unlimited, says the biggest challenge was rigging 99 points in 48 hours. Having worked on the gig on numerous oth

UK - Laser displays on an epic scale lit up the seafront and promenade in Weymouth recently where, in eight weeks' time, the Olympic sailing events for London 2012 will be held.

Highly visible and iconic, the 'LightVeils' display is unique to Weymouth. It is also one of the final parts in an ambitious £2.5m seafront regeneration programme undertaken by the Borough Council and other partners. The luminous green laser patterns will now form a permanent night-time feature, shining across the beach and into the sea.

The innovative project was designed and delivered by international engineering consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff, based upon a concept developed by renowned artists Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier. The company won the 2009 design competition set up by Weymouth & Portland Borough Council and The Arts Council to deliver an artistic led lighting installation for

South Africa - NEC Display Solutions Southern Africa has confirmed the appointment of a third distribution partner, Electrosonic SA.

The strategic collaboration between NEC Display Solutions Southern Africa and Electrosonic is targeted at increasing local market share and informing the industry of the benefits and capabilities of NEC's innovative product solutions. While Electrosonic's core focus will be on public displays, large venue displays, events and the control room market, they will be distributing the complete range of displays, including large format displays and projectors.

"This is a strategic appointment where NEC Display Solutions Southern Africa aims to enhance its exposure in the local Pro AV and systems integration market by building on existing working relationships with complementary products currently distributed exclusively by Electrosonic," says

South Africa - Christie has announced the opening of a new office in South Africa - its first in the Southern hemisphere.

The setting up of Christie's new office in Africa, effective from 1 June, 2012, underpins the company's long commitment to the territory. This new office will provide facilities for demonstrations, customer and partner training, as well as inventory management.

The move has been in the planning for almost a year, and Dale Miller, Christie EMEA vice president, said, "Over the last three years we have been working to develop the right relationships to grow our business. As an organisation we invest heavily in training and believes this lies at the heart of quality service and support. So we look to the same commitments from our Partners."

He adds, "Just over a year ago Stage Audio Works put their service team through our advanced level servic

UK - The Queen's Jubilee Concert was a major talking point of the UK's weekend-long Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London, and XL Events played a major part in this highly prestigious event.

Responding to a commission from the show's lighting designer, Durham Marenghi, XL Events' project manager, Steve Greetham, worked for several weeks to specify and supply equipment and crew, both for the stunning projection mapping onto Buckingham Palace, and the onstage wraparound LED screens and IMAG cameras for the concert stage. This was cleverly built around the Queen Victoria Monument in front of the Palace.

For the much-talked-about Buckingham Palace projections, XL Events supplied a total of 36 Barco FLM HD 20K projectors arranged in six stacks of six, 12 Barco Image Pros and two Lightware DVI matrices, all under the watchful eye of Master Projectionist, Andy Joyes and his team.

UK - With throngs of people travelling to London to see the Diamond Jubilee celebratory events taking place, Creative Technology (CT) was asked by event organisers Innovision to provide huge modular displays in Trafalgar Square and St James Park and to supply signal distribution and supporting engineering services to the various mobile screens installed in the Mall and the Palace Forecourt.

CT provided an 87m² Lighthouse R7 screen in Trafalgar Square and a 39m² Lighthouse R7 screen in St James' Park South, enabling the tens of thousands of visitors and residents of the capital to view the long weekend's festivities in all its regal glory.

CT also controlled the content across a total of 13 screens in central London, combining the main broadcast feed, locally generated live images and an advert roll with both ticker and emergency messaging options. Signals were distributed ov

UK - XL Events helped celebrate some of the very best and most creative hairdressing talent in the UK, supplying LED screens and scenic video, an HD PPU, Catalyst playback and 4 HD cameras for the high profile 2012 L'Oréal Professional Colour Trophy Grand Final.

The event was staged in the Great Room at London's Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. Over 1000 dinner guests enjoyed two high energy catwalk shows - funky 'Rebel London' by Peter Gray and the RUSH Artistic Team's amazingly colourful, animated 'Tryptych', and the presentation of the Finalists Awards.

XL Events' project manager Paul Wood was working for Kate Wright and Lisa Shenton from technical production company Papilo, alongside show designer Bruce French.

XL Events has worked on the L'Oréal Colour Trophy for the last six years. This was its third consecutive year at the prestigious central London l

UK - Green Hippo made an appearance at PSco's open day, hosted in Birmingham on 21 May, showcasing how the Hippotizers could benefit customers working within new markets.

Green Hippo was joined by manufacturers such as Panasonic, with their 152" plasma screen and Orion with their Infinite video wall tiles. PSco is looking to expand their market presents in the north of the UK and it was an opportunity for Green Hippo to target the installation market. Those who got to see the Hippotizer's in action were impressed at the possibilities available when using the product, saying that the Hippotizer has about half a lorry loads worth of equipment, crammed into one small rack mount box.

Psco continued their tour, taking them to Manchester, where Green Hippo's Nick Charalampidis continued to excite people with the mass array of features available on the Hippotizer systems.

Tom

Australia - The latest step in projectiondesign's global growth strategy is the appointment of Hills Sound, Vision & Lighting Group as a new distribution partner for Australia and New Zealand.

The appointment means that projectiondesign products and technical support will be available in every major Australian and New Zealand city which will greatly benefit integration customers and partners, says the company.

"Hills SVL Group already distributes a high-calibre range of products which is backed up with highly specialised technical know-how and educational support," says Stuart Craig, group general manager at Hills SVL Group. "The addition of projectiondesign to our product portfolio will enable us to gain increased traction in the advanced imaging markets which projectiondesign has an already strong presence. The addition of projectiondesign is the perfect match

UK - The award-winning wysiwyg previsualization suite from CAST Software of Toronto, Canada was part of the royal fanfare at the recent Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert, held at Buckingham Palace, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

The concert called for extravagant lighting, video projections on the Palace and of course, plenty of pyro. The star-studded line up included Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John, Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, Stevie Wonder, Sir Tom Jones and Madness, among others.

Lighting designer Durham Marenghi sat at the creative helm with a tall order to fill, as the concert was attended by the Royal Family and broadcast worldwide. Not only did he have to provide stellar lighting for some of the world's biggest pop stars but he also had to deliver something that would prove equally gripping for the live and TV audience at home. To a

UK - Christie has announced that UK distribution partner, Audio Visual Material (AVM), will add MicroTiles into their existing portfolio for the UK fixed AV installation market. AVM currently distribute Christie's full ranges of LCD, 1-chip and 3-chip projectors as well as Christie Spyder range.

The move is described by James Belso, Christie UK sales manager, as a "natural extension to the Christie range AVM already handle very successfully. They are consciously focussed distributors, have embraced the value of the Christie brand and established themselves as an extension of the Christie unit to their own extensive partner channel."

Joe Graziano, EMEA market development manager, MicroTiles, Christie, explains, "MicroTiles was first introduced into the market three years ago and in that time has established itself as the leader and pioneer within the new concepts

USA - - Barco has added three heavy-duty and high-definition three-chip DLP projectors to its rental portfolio. The new HDF-W22 offers 22,000 lumens light output, the HDF-W26 clocks in at 26,000 lumens and the HDQ-2K40 generates no less than 40,000 lumens.

Additionally, Barco's HDX-W18, HDF-W26 and HDQ-2K40 projectors will be available with a unique adjustable brightness feature later this year. Thanks to this 'light-on-demand' technology, rental partners have full flexibility to tune the light output of their projector to the specific needs of their customer's event, says the company. Barco will unveil the new HDF-W22, HDF-W26 and HDQ-2K40 projectors at InfoComm in Las Vegas this week.

(Jim Evans)

UK - The new 'Lightweight' project from Impossible Arts is a portable, four-metre diameter translucent sphere which achieves 360-degree imaging from four internally-mounted projectors. The imagery is mesh-warped to counter the distortion caused by the curved surface and graded masks allow the separate images to merge and create a single moving image that seamlessly fills the globe.

It can handle a range of content including video effects, short films, 'streamers' (sets of images which dance and spin around the entire surface), giant satellite images of the earth, 'lumi' (music, sound and simple light effects operating in harmony) and even live Twitter steams.

The extraordinary visual impact of Lightweight required an audio system capable of delivering the same quality but which could be deployed unobtrusively. Pro Audio Systems supplied a Meyer Sound setup comprising six MM4-X

USA - The OCA Alliance has announced the completion of the OCA 1.0 specification, marking a significant milestone in its drive to create a standardised control and monitoring architecture for professional AV networks.

Open Control Architecture (OCA) defines a flexible and robust system control and monitoring standard that covers the entire range of professional media networking applications, from the smallest to the largest.

On 4 May, 2012, the OCA 1.0 specification was released to OCA Alliance Observer Members for comment. The OCA 1.0 specification will be presented to a public standards development organization for rendering into an open public standard.

OCA is not a media transport technology, and does not replace evolving media transport standards such as IEEE AVB. Instead, it is intended to complement such standards by providing a reliable and rich system control enviro

USA - The submission deadline for the fifth annual Rock Our World Awards is only weeks away, all nominations must be submitted by 1 July 2012. The awards, which recognise ground-breaking achievement by PLASA Members, were designed to acknowledge the genius of both the creator of technology and the designers or integrators who apply it. The awards were originated by ESTA and are now expanded as a worldwide program under PLASA.

Submissions can range from the simplest problem-solving product to unusual or complex uses of technology to projects that highlight the collaborative nature of our industry. If you've seen something that's impressed you in the last year, now is your chance to tell the world. It could be a piece of equipment you worked with, something you saw at a trade show, read about in an industry magazine, or an event you experienced. It could also be something your com

USA - ArKaos has announced the appointment of A.C. Lighting Inc as exclusive US and Canadian distributor for the ArKaos range of show & lighting media server products.

"We are delighted to welcome A.C. Lighting Inc. as our exclusive distributor for USA and Canada," says ArKaos business development manager, Agnes Wojewoda. "A.C. Lighting Inc. has a strong presence in the US market that will ensure ArKaos is represented at a much wider range of tradeshows, broadening our reach and making our products more readily available to a greater number of new customers. We are looking forward to a very exciting relationship ahead."

ArKaos' product line offers software and hardware combinations that allow those working on shows of all scales (and budgets) to incorporate video, projection or LED control into their productions and integrate them with the show's lighting.<

UK - XL Video continues to supply Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto (MX) world tour with LED screens, cameras / HD PPU, media servers and control plus crew, which has stepped up to play stadiums shows in the UK and Europe.

The expanded design features XL Video's brand new Pixled F-12 LED screen product. XL Video is the first company in the UK to take delivery of this impressively bright and clear surface.

The screen layout for this leg of the tour - developed by production and lighting designer Paul Normandale - features five striking circular F-12 surfaces onstage. The central one measures 9m in diameter and is flanked by two at 8m and then two at 10m on the outside. The two 8m screens are slightly angled to maximise site lines for the audience seated on the sides of the stadiums.

The live camera mix is cut by Andy Bramley, and the media server system is designed, programmed and opera

China - ArKaos has returned from a successful visit to China, visiting Beijing University and China Central Television, and exhibiting at PALM Expo with ShowPower, their exclusive distributor in China.

ArKaos has now developed a strong user base in China, which is progressing so rapidly with the ArKaos technology that its R&D department claim they are challenging its development! ShowPower is doing a great job in promoting ArKaos in this region and showed ArKaos products to great effect at PALM Expo, says the company.

The ShowPower booth exhibited the new Video Mapper extension for MediaMaster Pro as well as LED walls powered by MediaMaster Express and Kling-Net. The ArKaos Kling-Net protocol was also used on various other booths from different LED manufacturers at PALM Expo. The response from the visitors demonstrated the big interest for the new ArKaos Kling-Net protocol in

Canada - The event production community was shocked by another stage collapse tragedy on Saturday (16 June), when a partial roof collapse at Downsview Park, Toronto, killed one crew member and injured three others.

The stage, which was being set up for the final show on the North American leg of Radiohead's world tour, collapsed at 4.00pm local time, around one hour before the gates were due to open, killing 33-year-old Scott Johnson, a British drum tech who was working on the stage at the time.

Of the three people injured, a 45-year-old male suffered head injuries, but these were reportedly not life threatening. The two others were less seriously injured and were treated at the scene.

A message on the Radiohead website says: "We have all been shattered by the loss of Scott Johnson, our friend and colleague. He was a lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny, a

UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) 2012 Theatre Show Awards, sponsored by two of the organisation's Silver Industry Supporters Group members, Stage Electrics & Triple E, took place following close of show on Wednesday (13 June).

With judging taking place throughout the day and final decisions made late in the afternoon, winners were presented with their hook-clamp trophies in the Truman Brewery's Corbet Place Bar, in front of exhibitors, guests and ABTT members. The winners are as follows:

ABTT 2012 Theatre Show Engineering Product of the Year: Metool Reels - Multicore Contactless Reeler.

Judges' comments: "We are pleased to find a method of feeding multicores on a drum that does not use slip rings. The panel was impressed by the tool-less cable installation and ability to run Ethernet on a cable reeler."

Eric Marks-Oldham, sales di

UK - Live video and AV production and rental specialist Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) has appointed Lee Gruszeckyj to boost its busy project management team. Gruszeckyj - popularly known as Lee G - will be co-ordinating a diverse range of CPL's events work, and also expanding business in the broadcast sector, where there is a healthy demand for camera crews for news shoots and commercials. He is highly respected in this area and has many contacts.

Gruszeckyj has worked in the live video production since he was 16 and has a passion and zeal for his work that is an ideal fit with CPL's philosophy, the company says. His industry experience includes freelancing for a number of leading companies and brands for the last six years, dealing with video and IMAG systems - both engineering and directing - and also projection, through which he has built up a broad technical and creative k

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