ETC Ion 1500 for West Gippsland Arts Centre, Australia The West Gippsland Arts Centre Warragul, near Melbourne, Australia, is a major performing arts, cultural and community center catering to a wide variety of events, meetings, conferences and festivals. Its facilities include a fully equipped 492-seat proscenium arch theatre and a 200-seat performing arts space. For many years, the lighting department used an old Strand 520 console, which was recently retired from service. "It was getting a bit long in the tooth especially when it came to moving lights," says Jayson Bowles, technical coordinator at the venue. "Out of the current crop of consoles on the market, we found that the ETC Ion 1500 covered our needs. It's similar in operation to the Strand console, so our guys picked it up fairly quickly and, of course, the moving light side of things is a huge improvement over the old Strand. We looked at the current Strand offerings, particularly the Palette, but we didn't like them. They looked like you'd need to be a computer programmer to get your head around them! The Ion was much simpler to navigate." Although the Ion 1500 is used primarily in the Arts Centre's main theatre its portability means it can easily be taken to the performing arts space if required. Bowles reports that his guys find the Ion 1500 to be very intuitive and easy to program. "The off-line editing is handy and the moving light palette that allows all the functions of your moving light to appear is great," he says. "It means that you can select any fixture and immediately control any attribute with the graphic on the screen. It's also still a great theatre desk -- you have a designer ask you to add three seconds to Cue 2 and it's very easy to do so. Its versatility is very good." The console was supplied by Jands. 
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