This is horrible, and it just goes to show why safety is of the utmost importance in our business. CNN reported yesterday that “A laser show at a music festival injured more than 30 people, Russian news reports said. Some concertgoers lost up to 80 percent of their vision after attending the Aquamarine Music Festival on July 5, the newspaper Kommersant reported.”

Now, granted, it also says that the festival was illegally organized and that it didn’t have the proper permits. Let’s all try to steer clear of such productions, shall we? If it’s not worth your integrity, then perhaps actually keeping your profession and livelihood is a motivator! Lots of folks are refusing to comment. Hmmm.

Here’s the full story:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/15/laser.russia.ap/index.html

I received a press release yesterday containing results of a survey conducted by Suffolk University and released by American Management Services, the results of which say that a majority of small business owners (that’s a lot of you out there) are incredibly dissatisfied with how the federal government treats small businesses. And the future doesn’t look too bright, either, as the polls say the candidates don’t have their acts together. Here’s a brief summary of the findings:

“81% feel we are in an economic recession

78% feel economic stimulus checks are useless

86% say the federal government is doing “nothing” or “little” to help small businesses

Labor costs and inflation considered much larger problems than healthcare

72% believe that the federal government bailing out Wall Street and big business

80% have no idea what McCain’s and Obama’s platforms are on small business

Romney and Clinton are overwhelming choice of VP candidates for small business owners

90% of small businesses did not participate in the administration’s small business week

77% feel that the US needs to open up the restricted oil reserves in Alaska, and off-shore in Florida and California”

Now, I don’t want to get into a heated political debate (Go, Obama!), but I wonder how may in our little niche industry have the same complaints. I would guess the majority of folks out there working freelance or even small manufacturers (you know those hundreds of smaller booths at LDI?) qualify as small business owners. Is it as bad as ever out there?

Pixelsumo.com reported last week on a “UFO” controlled by SMS and covered in 3,000 LEDs, the concept of artist Peter Coffin and created by Cinimod Studio, that may (or may not) have actually hovered over Gdansk, Poland. The article is here, and the YouTube video below (can we ever really trust what we see on YouTube?):

http://www.pixelsumo.com/

Hard to believe it was over a month ago that I attended the cocktail party for the 2008 Lumen Awards at Chelsea Piers in NYC. The Lumens are the annual awards given by The Illuminating Engineering Society, New York City Section, to honor outstanding architectural lighting projects. The party is quite festive, overlooking the Hudson River, and the cocktails are followed by a gala dinner and After Glow party, which was lit by Marsha Stern this year, with a rig that included a Hippotizer media server, so it was nice running into Marsha, and “Chippa” and Scott Vontobel from TMB, as well as old friends from the architectural lighting arena such as Paul Gregory, Christen Methot, Sepp Spenlinhauer, etc….oddly the press was only invited to the cocktail party so I didn’t actually get to see the awards presented, but they went to a wide variety of projects, with a full list available at www.iesny.org/Lumen.aspx.

I was pleased to see that Paul Gregory was honored for the Times Square Ball, winning a Citation for Increasing Public Awareness of LED’s for the new ball that drops on New Year’s Eve. As the press release stated: Referencing their theatrical experience, designers Paul Gregory, Christine Hope and Bret Anderson knew that the ball’s triangular crystals had to sparkle as much when viewed from 500′ away as they did 10′ away.



The Times Square Ball was covered in the November issue of Live Design (http://livedesignonline.com/stagingrental/fly_ball/index.html)

Nice that a performing arts facilty was in the winner’s circle as well: the beautifully designed Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, in Orange County, CA, where once again LEDs played an important role in meeting energy codes. The architectural lighting design is by Cline Bettridge Bernstein Lighting Design, New York, N.Y.

Also honored was the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center, New York, N.Y. with its cool white lighting designed by Tillotson Design Associates, New York, N.Y.

Congrats to all the winners!

Well, I’ve just returned from 3 weeks of cruising aboard the inaugural voyage of Holland America’s ms Eurodam. I’ve designed a bunch of shows for Holland America over the last 4 years. Working in the modern cruise era is always dissonant, the theatres are ultra modern, equipped beyond the wildest imaginings of many. Multiple stage lifts, turntables, incredible tracked & automated fly systems that keep flying pieces from moving against the ships motions… Hundreds of Vari*Lites…

And, happily enough for me, a big flying full stage backdrop of MiTrix, and a rack full of Hippotizers to feed it delicious content.

Yet, I’ll not pretend that this entertainment is aimed at the serious dramaturgs among us (this is that dissonance part)… Let’s face it, this is frothy, fun, uh… Air filled stuff. But it is really pretty, and secretly, I really enjoy it… It’s entertainment… You can take the boy out of Vegas, but…

So our mission would be to cook content and cue it for a musical review show called Nightlife. We’d also be making some content tweaks in another review, In Concert. This in the company of my most able Assistant/Programmer, the irascible Sean Cagney.

In the mean time, one of my other partners, Matt Skerritt, would be leading a shooting crew (well really it was just him, me, and our good friend & Grip Gregg Gilmore) in producing all of the custom on-board media that would go with the introduction of a new class of ship. Staterooms have televisions… And these ships all have unique identities in terms of marketing, information, and safety media. So Matt would be shooting and editing on board as soon as the ship left the Fincantieri Shipyard in Venice. By 10 days later he would have to be done creating many pieces of on-board media, just in time for a gala christening and the first cruise from Rotterdam.

It would be a chase to the finish for us both. And we would all do it in a virtual communications blanket. The ship’s onboard telecommunication and wireless internet services didn’t activate until 3 days before we reached Rotterdam. We were unable to access any media not with us on the ship. We couldn’t even call home or check emails… Ever seen what an email box looks like after 2 and a half weeks of not checking it ? Ugly…

But it also cleared the way for us to focus solely on the gigs at hand, which were numerous enough to demand it. Ultimately all the stage shows would be sync’d to SMPTE Timecode and run from a custom AMX control system. First we had to write all of our cues in Sean’s GrandMA console. Then identify our proper placement in TC, then merge with the lighting cue stack. Plenty of layers to peel technically. This in addition to generating super hot, pop content.

In our ’spare’ time we created all of the media for the christening ceremony itself. A huge dockside arena was constructed, and we would work with XL Video’s fabulous gang from London to setup multiple LED screens, roll content from a Catalyst, and catch onstage fun with a sizable IMAG setup. Various Holland America historical pieces, some ship building documentary, and a tribute to the Dutch Royal Family (who attended).

Ultimately we docked in Rotterdam, carried the proverbial day, and delivered a sparkling, vastly entertaining new ship to the cruise mad masses.

Congratulations to Holland America. My what a large boat you have !!

Now off to Amsterdam for some Rest & Recoup… “Hey isn’t that Patrick Dierson and Jay-Z in that Bentley ? I love Europe !”