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The Desert Turns Green

There’s a new player on the Las Vegas Strip: The Palazzo — “palace” in Italian — is a AAA five-diamond luxury hotel and casino resort offering the height of sophistication and elegance. But the $1.9 billion Palazzo is also the largest LEED-certified building in the world, having been awarded Silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) status by the U.S. Green Building Council in recognition of the property’s commitment to “green” technology and construction across categories of sustainable sites, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, materials and resources, and energy and atmosphere.

LDI 2008: What Recession?

We don’t mean to be cavalier about this, but compare and contrast the recently-held LDI 2008 in the Las Vegas Convention Center to the one held immediately after September 11, 2001 in Orlando and you can come to only one conclusion: What recession?

The 8th Annual Parnelli Awards

For Parnelli video clips, CLICK HERE!

 

If there was any doubt before, it’s officially squelched: The Parnellis have arrived. The show, which featured rocker Alice Cooper and guest comic Michael Wilson among many surprises, was a big hit. The 8th Annual Parnelli Awards ceremony, the “Oscars” of the live event industry, was held on Oct. 24 at the Rio Las Vegas Resort and Casino. The event was sold out, and, in fact, additional tables and chairs had to be brought out to accommodate the surge of last minute arrivals who wanted to be a part of it all.

Eric Cathcart on Both Sides of the Snake

When the Red Bull International Freestyle Motocross competition came to the Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas, lighting designer Eric Cathcart was there to make sure the lighting was up to par for the hi-def acquisition.

Mega-Stage

“The company is new, but the product is not,” says Jocelyn Roux of Mega-Stage. Mobile stages, he adds, are “something that we know.” Roux is the head designer for the new-to-us stage company, which is based in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec, Canada, just southeast of Montreal.

Content Creation Software

What are some of the features that you will need to have when you are creating video content for the media servers on your next show? While we’re not recommending any one software package over another, we will talk about some of these things that you may find handy when you are building custom content for your next media server application.

Martin MAC III Profile

Charles H. Duell, the former commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said in 1899 that everything that can be invented, has been invented. Of course, everyone knows that wasn’t true until 2002 when Martin introduced the animation wheel in the MAC 2000. Then and only then had everything been invented, at least in terms of automated lighting. Sure, lots of new automated lighting products were introduced since then, but true innovation seemed to be lacking. Not anymore.

Electric Christmas

Right about now, you’re starting to see the first twinkling of holiday lighting. Even among industry professionals, the red and green waves that presage Christmas quickly blend into the background. That is, until you turn the corner on a neighborhood like Howard Beach, in Queens, N.Y., where traffic slows to a crawl for over a month as people converge from the tri-state area to gawk at lighting displays that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

New Lamps for Old

While the entertainment world was busy romancing the new generation of LED sources, physicists and electronic techs were busy marrying two technologies that would soon yield another lamp source to rival LEDs in efficiency and surpass them in other areas. The new LiFi solid-state plasma lamp is a tiny bulb, radio-frequency power supply, and electronic circuit that puts out a tremendous amount of light in a very efficient manner.

Truth or Fiction? Metering AC Voltage

When Al Gore was the vice president, he created the Hammer Award to recognize people in the U.S. government who helped eliminate inefficiency and waste. The award consisted of a $6 hammer wrapped with a red, white, and blue ribbon, and mounted in a glass encased frame. Apparently the idea for the award came at least in part from the discovery that the U.S. Navy once paid $436 for a single hammer.

LED Enlightenment

Recently I journeyed to the Mecca of Illumination to study at the feet of the master guru of LEDs.  I trained with the legendary leader for weeks and meditated on the growing energy of LED lighting programming.  My teacher enlightened me about the ever-increasing importance for an automated lighting programmer to master the Zen of controlling LED products.   Through focused visualization, the guru shared an assortment of methods, tips and essentials to help me find my own path of LED illumination.

Lighting the Big Gospel Show

I’ve lit a lot of things before — televised events, concerts, trade shows, cars, boats and planes. But I’ve never lit a church. In fact, I have never had any contact with this whole side of the lighting industry (though I wish I did). So I had to smile when I got a call to light some choirs. But they were not in any church; they were in a touring arena show.