Hello, welcome to my Blog, this about page is well overdue an update so here on the 4th August 2014 I’m updating it. So this is me in the picture below, not working but relaxing on holiday in Berlin.
Statistics
DOB: 01/01/1980
Originally from: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Residence: Arround the UK
Get In touch: andy[at]andy-coates.com
Why Blog?
Good question, first I like letting people know what Ive what I’ve been up to, I ditched Facebook almost 3 years ago (Sept 2011) so this blog is my equivalent, open timeline, anyone can see it. Secondly its helps when I’m trying to explain to people a project i was working i can just point them towards my blog. Third, I enjoy it, its quit satisfying doing a round up of the past week/month and getting it out there.
What do i do?
Somehow over the past few years I’ve managed to carve a career out of doing what can only be described as “things with technology, hardware & software, for the entertainments industry”. To make more sense of things heres a potted history. After leaving school i studied 4 years of engineering and served some of an aprenticeship at NWC engineering as a CNC programmer. After finishing my studies I decided that this wasn’t what i wanted to do, there was limited scope for creativity and progress so I decided to go back to college. During my time in engineering I was also working part time at a recording studio near where i lived so I decided that was what I wanted to do, be a recording engineer and work on live gigs! So I left the engineering factory, went and worked in Crete, Greece for a few month with my best mate as a bar tender and upon returning went back to college. It was a crazy time and was happy to seized and have had the opportunity. I then studied 4 years at college going from music technology into music production, and I’m non college time worked at various theatres doing all the non glamorous work. Following the end of my studies I worked for more and ore various companies slowly becoming more apt at problem solving and coming up with software/hardware solutions for various events.
Fast forward to 2008 after a chance meeting through a friend of a friend I was involved with the software pixel mapping in the development stages for some LED brollies used in the Beijing handover ceremony for StageOne, after that I was then asked to program the media server for the Wine-tower which is in the Radisson Blu hotel at Zurich airport and then program the media server for the london production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert. It was 6 month of very fast learning problem solving and incredibly high pressure, it seemed after that people would email or call me with requests for systems and hardware solutions for projects they were working on and since then I have been “That Person” who people call when they have a show with something out of the ordinary. So thats me trying to explain what I do, if theres someone reading this who knows me and has a better explanation please get in touch!
Best
Andy
NOTABLE PROJECTS
Priscilla QOTD : Media server development and pixel mapping, 400 universes of art-net split across 2 servers in 2009, this was allot for the time and a bit of an insane thing to do.
FILAMENT Lumiare 2009 : In 2009 I was asked by art collective filament to come up with a solution for touch reactive 2m LED tubes, 140 of them, so when the public touched the they changed from green to red. Video
Jonsi Live tour : I was the second number 1 video operator trained by Jonathan Lyle for the visually intensive live music show for Jonsi produced by 59Productions. It was a brilliant mix of theatre and music and have fond memories of the fun and the pressure!
Zarkana Circue Du Soliel : For Stage one creative services I was head of realising custom LED lighting for this stage show, working with Karl Bromage we came up with a custom scalable LED solution for the stage set. Around 500m of custom warm white led was seamlessly integrated into the staging.
Bluebeards Castle : For the Philharmonia orchestra I was part of a small team creating the projection element for the opera “Blue beard’s castle”. I was programming video which involved projecting onto an automated moving set.
2012 London Olympics : Hardware and system design for various elements of the technical infrastructure. Too in-depth to list here
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics : Software and system design for various elements of the insanely massive Russian winter olympics show. I also spent 4.5 month in onsite as technical support fixing thing as they came.
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