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of interest…….

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    Sandance DUBAI!

    Its hot, humid, dusty and this week im working on a beach in Dubai! Im lucky that working in the industry i do takes me to different places arround the world and this week just happens to be a the Atlantis Hotel Dubai prepearing for a beachparty called Sandance where around 10,000 peoople will be enjoying a party on the beach. One of my good friends Shaun Moore asked me to be part of his Geordie lighting team working for Gearhouse who are looking after the technical side of this gig.
    Its currently the morning of day 4 and so far it has been a really busy/productive fun week. Its my first time out here and as with all new places, I wasnt 100% certain what to expect. We landed on Sunaday evening late and got picked up on Monday at 09.30 (local) and taken  to site by one of our new work colegues Andor. We met the rest of the team, Neil, Dave, Matt, Steve, Jules, Chandi allong with a load of local crew. The following 12 hours of work consisted of hanging and cabling many lighting fixtures, rigging truss, dringking LOADS of water in the baking heat and sweating most  of it back out again. The only thing whch slowed down the day was whist we were waiting for the tide to go out s the truck carrying out generators could drive around the stage (Stage right of the stage meets the shoreline when the tide is in) to put the generators in place. Whilst doing this the truck managed tog et stuck in the sand  with one side on the dry part of the beach and oneside almost in the water, you dont see that very often!


    The truck with our generators on being towed out of the sand!

    Luckily for everyone we had a Telehandler onsite to tow the truck so our lighting power could be delivered! The working day finished arround 22.30 and we were taken to a local bar for a few afterwork pints which was very much like the Cantina bar out of Starwars, this was great craic and a good end to a long day!

    Tuesday we continued to place the rest of the lights getting all of the rig up and runing way ahead of schedule, it great when that happens! We finished arround 20.00 and Chandi offered to take us (Geordie techs) out and show us arround some of Dubai. After a grabing some quick food and having superfast shower we were onroute to “The Mall” to see the ?Burj Khalifa, the wolds tallest building standing at 828 meters. The tower is actually amazing and without actually seeing it, it is hard to describe the scale, so big I had to take a picture of it in 2 as as it was too big for the lens on my phone!

    Burj Khalifa, taken on my Iphone

    The tower is surrounded by a huge shoping complex, bars, places to eat, its all a little bit like Vegas in allot of ways. Walking tough the mall on the way back to the car I couldnt beleive it when i saw a Gold vending machine, where you could buy small gold bars, Krugerrands and other solid god items!!


    Shaun & Sad (Lee) with the Gold vending machine!!!!!!!

    The evening ended with a drink in a nightclub/bar called Bar Zar next to the Burj Al Arab hotel with some really cheesy club singers provinging the entertainment, even next to the worlds first 7-star hotel you get cheesy club singers, another fun end to a hard days graft.

    Wednesday was a later start for myself and Shaun as we were working the later shift to finish running power & data arround site to the sitle lighting and focusing whilst is was dark. After bing onsite for a couple of hours it was arround 16.00, Matt, on of our production managers startd shouting for ous to get down of any structure, ground all of the hanging PA towers and strap things down as a sandstorm was comming! Looking over the bay the building s and cranes had dissapeard outof sight! we had a small time window but we managed to make everything safe and everyine managed to get down fromt the trusses in time. The picture below doesnt really do it justice but you should be able to see the hotel behind the stage.


    Our own personal sandstorm, normally you can see the hotel behind the stage!

    The dustcloud eventually passed and we continued to work through till the early hours, continuing with site lighitng to make the rest of the site look pretty for the gig.

     Jules, Andor, Sad(Lee) & Neil catching some ‘shade’

    There has been allot of graft done in the past 3 days as well as allot of fun squeezed into a couple of hours of free time, its a good bunch here and we all seem to mange to continually take the piss out of each other for evereyones amusement.

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    I think it has been a good week…….

    I began writing this blog at what I had anticipated was going to be a very busy work period in my life, if you don’t know me then you probably don’t now what I do professionally for a living and without knowing what I do this wont make sense so now is apt to tell you a little about myself. First of all, as a pre-cursor, this is what this week has entailed.

    Monday:
    Drove to York to start a week of work at SOCS, arrived at the workshop and went over the custom LED strip which had been built for Cirque’s move to Madrid with Zarkana, in the evening went to the gym and rowed 10k in 44minutes.

    Tuesday:
    Worked with Karl going over the point hoist electrical drawings updating and modifying things.

    Wednesday:
    Drew up the panelwork for the track power & point switching cabinets for this current job we are working on, also updated the electronic interface board for each winch cabinet. In the evening went out for steak with everyone who is working together, English Canadian Australian & Chinese, its a good mix 🙂

    Thursday:
    Spent all day modifying drawings & updating drawing to the electrical drive cabinets, non stop working with the designer, electrical wiremen and other freelancers like myself to get things moving. Went to the gym at Weatherby leisure-centre, almost couldn’t get in because of the rude woman serving behind the counter didn’t believe we hand been before without been ‘official members’, eventually got in, rowed 10k in 44.44mins

    Friday:
    Collated the patch & schematic for an LED system comprising of around 600 Schnick Schnack B50 LED panels, spread over an arena size area, fully pixel-mapped and controlled by Artnet. Finished work, gave Joe a lift to York train station and drove northwards home.

    Friday night:
    Popped in Dance city to catch up with my friend James and others to socialise for a bit, now currently writing this!

    So, as mentioned earlier, that maybe doesn’t make too much sense, so a little about me from almost the beginning.

    IN THE BEGINNING
    I was born on New Years Day 1980, Andrew Coates, Son of Jennifer & Alan Coates, younger brother to Dianne & Janice Coates. I grew up in a small village outside Newcastle called Burnopfield. I expect my childhood was very similar to many other counterparts around that time in that area. I played with friends, got into scrapes, messed around in the local woods and had a healthy fascination with trying to climb things such as fences and trees.
    I guess school was also standard, there was a good mix of friends and  enemies, we got picked on by the older kids and thus passed this onto our younger counterparts when we eventually became the older kids, I guess thats some form of twisted karma?
    Memorable events from ages 0 to 11 are…….

    Sitting next to a garden gnome on the Isle of White whilst on holiday with my parents and getting my picture taken (That photo is still arround somewhere and I have no idea why I remember this)

    Getting a very stern smacking and telling off from my Dad after climbing up onto the back of the sofa during December sometime and opening all of the windows on the advent calendar which had been placed “out of arms reach” to retrieve all the tiny plastic figurines hidden behind the doors.

    Building tree-houses and dens in the local woods with friends and coming back to find that 2 weeks of hard work over the summer holidays had been trashed by someone. Undeterred we rebuilt a underground hide which blended into the pine needle covered forest floor which was almost impossible to find. The weekend later  we returned to find what looked like someone had stepped onto the roof of our den and fell in the big hole we had created leaving some shredded bits of denim jeans and a bit of blood, oops!

    Kissing Anna Lucas in the corner at the bottom of the Yard whilst the rest of my class watched and possibly cheered. I remember it been allot of peer pressure to do something which at the time wasn’t very nice (due to age, not due to Anna, she was lovely, and a good friend who I have not seen since arround 1997! wow!).

    Leaving Burnopfield Primary school age 10 to move onto the big scary place they called Tanfield comprehensive, where good live lessons were learned.

    PAUSE: I dont want to make each blogpost too long so I think I’ll stop here for this one, I guess ive just set myself up to write a brief overview of ages 11 to 16 next!

    Has this week been a good week? Yes i think it has!

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  • A Week of Video Programming

    Its been a hell of a busy week or so since last posting here, I’ve just spent week down London programming video for a new production of Bluebeards Castle, click on the link for more info about the production but a super quick summary would describe it as an opera immersed with visuals to tie in with the story. Working with Yeast Culture who have produced the visuals and set design I’ve been responsible for programming the playback of the video using a Catalyst media server.

    Our Versatile & Nimble programming setup!

    The backdrop to the orchestra consists of many turret like shapes which we use as projection surfaces as-well as a large set of automated sail like surfaces which we project onto whilst moving. There is allot of viideo to pay back synchronised on many different surfaces at the same time as-well as taking into consideration the ‘Live masking’ we are doing enabling us to project onto the moving surfaces. Technically it has been a hard week but nothing we couldn’t figure and overcome.

    Pre starting work I drove down London on saturday night with my good friend Mitch as a day holiday(ish) and intentions of seeing UVA’s Video Installation piece High Arctic. We walked form our accommodation though to Greenwich and discovered the sunday market which is really good if you like wood carvings and nice arty stuff , this guy, Tom Biddulph had some very nice wood turnings. We eventually went to the maritime museum and had a wander round, its a good place to visit and you can easily fill in half a day. This is where High arctic was being shown. The installation in short is set in the future as a monument to the currently melting ice caps with interactive projection you can activate using the UV torch given to you upon entrance. There wasnt as much wow factor as I was expecting but worth a look. Also in the museaum here is a instalation by the Light Surgeons which was quite nice. For a full better review check out CreativeReview.

    The rest of the day was taken up meandering through london via tube/water ferry and foot interspaced with eating some cracking food! The following day I needed to drive to Holloway in Islington, dreading London morning traffic I tool the Blackwall Tunnel to avoid going through the city centre!  Eventually we got there and typically, just as we were about to enter the traffic had stopped as a vehicle had broken-down in the tunnel, Damn!  Eventually 20minutes or so later we were moving again, i dropped Mitch off at bow to make his way to kings Cross and i carried on to holloway with a surprising amount of time to spare. The following 5 days consisted of many hours of programming Catalyst on the Chamsys, quite allot of coffee and good company and squeezing in time to meet up with some London friends.

    This weekend has also kind of vanished with work, home life and generally doing stuff! On saturday I was working at Dance City here home in Newcastle with a great company called Ockhams Razor. They are a dance company who combine dance/performance/ariel and circus skills to tell a story, all Ill say is if you see them advertised performing close to you go and see them!

    And today, Sunday, a morning of washing, a midday of lunch with friends, an afternoon of visiting my parents and an evening tidying up the bluebeard video programming whilst it is fresh in my mind!

     

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