Canon of The Netherlands opens
- Details
The exhibition, which covers the highlights and low lights of Dutch history since the Stone Age, combines historical objects on loan from collections throughout the Netherlands with deployments of the latest audio-visual and display technologies.
Working in intimate collaboration with exhibition architects Kossmann.dejong and a multi-disciplinary team of film, animation and interactive designers, Rapenburg Plaza of Amsterdam were engaged to implement the lighting, show control and audiovisual technologies for the exhibition.
“We work in parallel with Rapenburg Plaza in most of our projects and they help bring our ideas to life. They have an expert, specialist team who work to bring all exhibition elements together in a holistic and creative way. At the Canon of The Netherlands, there is something for everyone. It’s designed to be as interactive and proactive as possible for visitors to discover so much about Dutch history and the Netherlands as an ever changing and evolving country,” said Robert van der Linde, project leader and spatial designer at Kossmann.dejong.
Unlike some of the museum’s outdoor exhibits which work best in mild weather, Canon of The Netherlands is entirely located away from the weather: in buildings, in a partially-subterranean dome, and in an underground tunnel. Divided into four sections, the exhibition consists of 50 ‘windows’ into Dutch history arranged in ten broad periods.
Stijn van Bruggen, project manager at Rapenburg Plaza said: “After 18 months of engineering, consulting, technical design and brainstorming, the Canon of The Netherlands is finally ready. Our team of experts have applied a design-thinking approach which is actually a very disciplined way of knowing what technologies to integrate into an exhibit and to meet all client and stakeholder expectations.”
In the subterranean cinema, A Bird’s Eye View of Holland, features different short films on its 3m (10ft) x 15.3m (50ft) panoramic screen, with the projected image covered by three Canon XEED WUX6010 6000 lumen WUXGA (1920 x 1200) projectors blended through Showlogix software and replayed from a Showlogix media server. The film soundscape was created by composer Eric Hense and audio and sound design in cooperation with IJsfontein and Redrum.
“To give the effect of audio being behind the audience, here we used six different multitrack channels sent out to 8 speakers Xilica DSPs and 7.1 surround sound,” explained audio and show control engineer Wilfred de Zoete at Rapenburg Plaza.
The interactive learning room is dominated by a 36sq.m wall of touch screen panels. By using the unique RFID tag, visitors could have their enquiries and additional reference material emailed to the them. This is facilitated by 50 KissBox Networked RFID Readers. The Canon tabletop 32-inch browsers used a website overlay with Google maps and points of interest where subjects are displayed ensuring that visitors can zoom in, type in their own area code.
IJsfontein Interactive Media was the company who designed all interactive learning and gaming elements at the Canon.
To give a sense of the scale of Rapenburg Plaza’s contribution to this project, it has specified, installed, configured and commissioned, 67 projectors, 66 touch screens, 46 video players, 103 loudspeakers and 59 audiovisual computers, using some 177 data and video extenders and 33 network switches, over 45km of power and data cables and a capacity of 80,000KWH. Rapenburg Plaza’s created all computers, media players and processors in house to preserve valuable exhibition floor space and to provide central access for maintenance.
The Rapenburg Plaza technical team and client can control every aspect the system using a custom-made app incorporating Alcorn McBride technology. “Remote monitoring and maintenance will be integrated into the entire park through a centralised system in the future,” said de Zoete.
(Jim Evans)
