UK - Avolites has appointed London-based Annalisa Terranova as its new Ai Support Engineer and Trainer and Pratheepan Vigneswaran moves to Ai Sales as Ai launches its revolutionary V8 software.
Terranova has been freelancing with Avolites Ai as a programmer, operator and beta tester, before a permanent position arose. She has a degree in Stage Design and a Masters in Performance Design and Practice from Central St. Martins, where she also works as a guest lecturer. In the past two years, she has experimented with various programs for live video manipulation, such as Isadora, Quartz Composer and Processing, and also the Kinect infrared sensor for motion tracking.
Terranova has worked with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Science Museum, designing interactive installations and sound reactive visuals.
"I saw the amazing work that Avolites had undertaken for the London 2012 Olympics, and I wanted to find out how they achieved that, technically," says Terranova. "I find it very exciting to work at the cutting edge of video technology, working side by side with people who push the boundaries of what can be achieved with the technologies that we have today."
Pratheepan 'Prads' Vigneswaran has been working with Avolites for 10 years, having joined straight from school. He has progressed from their Production department, through to Sales admin. He now moves into Ai Sales.
"I've had some great experiences with Avolites so far, my proudest moment being having a hand in building the servers that were used in the video mapping of London's Olympic Stadium. I see media and video as the future of show design. Recently shows have been more video and LED based, lighting is no longer the only focal point, and the possibilities are only growing. I'm excited to be a part of that."
The Avolites team also says a sad goodbye to Simon Graham, who departs after two years as Ai Service and Support Engineer to become Video and Media Server Technician at Media Powerhouse.
"It was not an easy decision as I was very happy being part of the Avolites Media family and supporting all the cutting edge projects that Ai media servers were used on throughout the world," says Graham. "The job offer that came from Media Powerhouse was an excellent opportunity to expand my live event skills across the board into sound, staging, lighting, rigging and of course video.
"A key reason for my employment at Media Powerhouse is my expert knowledge of Ai and its dedicated hardware. I will continue to beta test Ai for Dave Green (the lead developer of Ai) and give feedback about key features that benefit the corporate sector work for which Media Powerhouse are best known. As with many of the hardware suppliers Media Powerhouse uses, we give valuable feedback to the manufacturers so that they can better support our needs and in turn so they can develop the tools that make their products attractive to other companies like ourselves."
Avolites MD Steve Warren comments: "We would like to wish Simon all the best, and look forward to working with him in the future. We also welcome Annalisa to the Avolites family and Pratheepan into his new role. With the launch of V8, these are exciting times for Ai, and we're looking forward to a great year."
Running on Avolites' industry-leading range of Ai media servers, the new V8 software includes the revolutionary new Autoblend feature, distinctly setting Ai apart from the competition by allowing blending of large projection surfaces using multiple projectors. In addition, there is a brand new Surface Modelling page for the creation of editable 3D sets, and performance is hugely improved, with render engine optimisation offering 50% increased video throughput. Compositing high-resolution background layers with low-resolution foreground layers is also much improved.