Wideangle – Features

New York-based SIA Acoustics prides itself on creating spaces that work well for both audiences and performers. That ethic comes naturally to SIA consultant and system designer Adam Shulman, and was employed to great effect during the 2010 season of Mad. Sq. Music. ‘When someone asks why you’re recommending a piece of gear or a certain workflow, it’s important to be able to have actual field experience to bolster credibility and to make the right decisions,’ he says. ‘For this reason our team includes designers, engineers, technicians, architects and performers.’

Recycle Red We are making a serious mistake with our recycling.

You can come at this from various angles, but probably the simplest is terminology. We have become comfortable with ‘recycling’ as a term that legitimises our use of natural resources. Through it, we choose to believe that we are somehow replacing the natural resources that we are using. And that makes us feel better about our lives and our business.

Had we chosen to use the term ‘down-cycling’, however, we would be far more aware of the true state of affairs.

Green World In my previous Wideangle post, I raised the question: ‘is there any point in trying to be ‘green’ in professional audio? And the conclusion I proffered was that it was, for two main reasons.

First, because of the increasing expectation from society in general that businesses act responsibly. Second, that there’s good evidence suggesting that not being green drives negative perceptions; while being green is strongly associated with leadership and innovation.

Full Sail Live

The 30 years since its founding have seen Florida’s Full Sail arts design and entertainment media school has grown beyond its highest ambitions. Today, it offers a broad spectrum of accredited degree programmes encompassing music and sound, as well as film, design, show production, games, animation, web design, and music business. Three years in planning and a year-plus in construction, its Full Sail Live is one of the largest, dedicated sound stages for live concert training at an educational facility.

In the popular press, green covers everything from recycling newspapers to using public transport. It allows multinational companies to market ‘green’ groceries, politicians to adopt ‘green tickets’ and vehicle manufacturers to claim ‘green’ emission levels with equal ease.

But what of battery power? Both pro audio (particularly live and theatre work) and MI are voracious consumers of rechargable batteries... can they be green?

Over the past couple of decades, environmentalism has moved from being the domain of a vociferous minority into the mainstream of society, and consequently into almost every business activity. But it still doesn’t appear to have made any significant impact in the worlds of audio, video and lighting (AVL).

Is that because 'being green' has has nothing to offer to AVL, or there’s no demand? Is it seen as a costly luxury the industry can ill-afford to adopt? So is there any point even trying to be green in the first place?