International News

AARHUS, Denmark – Kazakhstan marked its 20th year of independence on Dec. 1 with a celebration at the Republic Palace concert hall in Almaty. The renovated venue features a new design with the latest in Martin Professional lighting technology. LD for the anniversary show was François Guillet of Lumières Utiles in France, with gear provided by the APM Group, Martin Professional’s distributor in Kazakhstan.

LONDON – LED lighting fixture manufacturer Prism Projection has appointed UK-based White Light as its exclusive European distributor. White Light already served as Prism’s exclusive UK distributor over the past few years, so this expanded agreement came forth during discussions at LDI 2011.

CANNES, France – Elation Professional’s Opti Tri White LED Pars were called in to shed some light on November’s G-20 Summit in Cannes, France. The gathering of world leaders, discussing financial markets and the world economy, needed clear visibility on the meeting table with high performance lighting equipment. French distributor ESL handled the installation.

SOUTH KIRKBY, Yorkshire, UK – LS-Live developed and delivered a touring set for hip hop’s Tinie Tempah. The key elements of the design include three cages outfitted with LED battens to act as performance spaces for the drummer, keyboard player and DJ. The cages sat on scissor lifts, which raised up and down during the show.

BLACKBURN, UK – HSL supplied Electric Fly Productions with lighting equipment for The Darkness’s UK tour. LD Nick Jevons collaborated with the band to create a look – for varied sizes of venues – described as “rock ‘n’ roll meets the faded freakshow end of the circus scale.” One of the biggest technical coups of the tour was fitting the entire rig into Nottingham Rock City and filling Hammersmith Apollo with exactly the same rig.

AARHUS, Denmark – Auckland International Airport in New Zealand offers travelers a visual respite with Pou Manawa. The space features color and traditional Maori designs, reflected using Martin Exterior 410 wash lights and Martin smartMAC image projecting moving heads. Ignite Architects developed the idea and Martin distributor Kenderdine Electrical Ltd. supplied the gear.

LUCERNE, Switzerland — Walt Disney’s animation masterpiece, Fantasia, may have been released more than 70 years ago, but a special screening here that was accompanied by a live performance by the 21^st Century Symphony Orchestra relied on recent technology to keep everything in synch: coolux Pandoras Box.

SERIATE, Italy – Germany-based disributor Lightpower provided Clay Paky moving heads for the Frankfurt 2011 IAA international auto show. The BMW stand featured 930 moving lights and 700 spotlights, controlled by three full-size grandMA2s, all networked together with 8 MA network processing units (NPUs).

LINCOLN, UK – Lincoln University has invested in 30 Chroma-Q Color Force RGBA LED fixtures for its two television studios at the campus’ Media Broadcast Production Centre, which have recently been upgraded to full multi-camera and HD specification facilities. The Chroma-Q Color Force fixtures and battens have replaced all the studio’s old soft lights and cyc lights, reducing about 43,000 watts of power consumption with 3,700 watts with the new LED lighting.

CZECH REPUBLIC – Slovakian rental company Q-99 supplied 50 Robe moving lights including Robe MMX Spots to LD Martin Kubanka for “Slovakian Legends of Pop.” The TV music series airs during a nine-week run on prime time national TV channel STV1. Taking the LED-oriented set design by Michael Brna as a starting point, Kubanka needed some seriously powerful light sources on the rig to hold their own amidst all the LEDs.

LONDON – UK theatrical suppliers Hawthorns recently supported LD Jonathan Samuels’ design of the Breakin’ Convention International Festival of Hip Hop Dance with a charitable loan of nine Clay Paky 1200 Profiles. The event at Sadler’s Wells Theatre featured an international line-up of dancers, whose performances required lighting to accommodate with shuttering and gobos.

LONDON – Green Hippo introduces Adrian Gilby and Philippe Levieux as new members of the software development team. Levieux joins the programming team as Researcher and Software Developer in the production of new features for Hippotizer software. As a programmer and Software Developer, Gilby will work on specifying, designing and implementing new features for Green Hippo’s existing and future range of products.