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InfoComm ’09

By the time the show floor for InfoComm ’09 opened at 9 a.m. on June 17, dozens of seminars and workshops had already taken place and over eight hundred exhibitors had spent countless hours setting up in the Orlando Convention Center, including roughly 50 lighting companies. The show, which started as an audiovisual show (why does the term “audiovisual” conjure images of overhead projectors and 16mm film in grade school?), has been growing the lighting side as evidenced by the increasing number of lighting exhibitors and lighting-related seminars.

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Bill Sapsis

Bill Sapsis has been at the forefront of rigging for the past 28 years. His company, Sapsis Rigging, is one of the leading rigging companies in our industry, and he’s spent countless hours helping develop programs that make rigging safer and easier.

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Elation Design Spot 1200C

Elation has stepped up their product line considerably in the last year, and the introduction of their latest hard edge light is no exception. They have become the first company to build a 1,200-watt fixture with a body the size of everybody else’s 700-watt models. And the light produced from the double-ended MSR 1,200-watt lamp is pure white with a perfectly flat field.

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CITP is MSEXy

ChamSys, Arkaos and Capture, three of the fastest growing software developers in the lighting and media server markets today, have developed an open network protocol called CITP/MSEX.      Companies like Martin, ETC and Green Hippo are beginning to join the parade by implementing the protocol into some of their latest products including Maxedia, Congo and Hippotizer.

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The Profitable Green Stage

When you look at a hybrid automobile and a conventional car side by side, you wouldn’t necessarily notice any difference until you looked under the hood. That’s kind of how Sustainable Waves, a turnkey staging/lighting/sound systems provider in Austin, Texas, likes to think of itself when it delivers portable music and events stages complete with wash lighting and audio. Except when you look under their hood, you’ll see solar panels, not an internal combustion engine.

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Tortured Artists

My friend Kenny Mednick is also a lighting designer who illuminates musicians on their tours. While I was speaking to him this year I mentioned that I had been working with some less-than-pleasant people in the last year, namely musicians who were, for lack of a better word, mean, disgruntled people.

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Death Magnetic

Last year, when Metallica was finishing a stadium tour and putting the finishing touches on their latest release, Death Magnetic, lighting designer John Broderick was preoccupied with other projects. The looming world tour meant that he was behind the proverbial eight ball.

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PRG Concert Touring Group Tames the Hurricane

PRG Concert Touring has supported tours by Madonna and other major artists.

John Lennon once said of touring, “It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You’d wake up at a concert and think, ‘Wow, how did I get here?’” A hurricane is an apt description of the touring world; all the elements combine to create an experience that envelops audience and artists alike.

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Star Wars: a Musical Journey

“Multi-Media” has just been redefined.

    Some 17,000 people recently witnessed Star Wars brought to life on stage in London’s O2 arena. The event condensed 13 hours of films and music into a 90-minute event that combined video, an 86 piece orchestra and an 80 piece choir. It delighted everyone in attendance, up to and including the creator of the film, George Lucas.

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Willie Williams Pulls Out of the Big Screen Cul-de-Sac

If there was a box in which we could put lighting designers who are creative, expressive, imaginative and intelligent, Willie Williams might be the first to be put in. And he would probably also be the first to break out. The artist and production designer is a master of re-creation, often the first to conceive an idea and the first to abandon it and move on to a fresher one.

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VXCO Lighting Systems DMXCreator 1024+

Software is the new frontier of lighting control. Advances in technology have made computers ridiculously affordable, powerful and readily available. The people who write code for them have harnessed that horsepower and put it to good use in our industry. Lighting control, for example, is making leaps and bounds, and DMXCreator software for the PC is a prime example.

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