SOLUTIONS: MARY ROSE MUSEUM, PORTSMOUTH UNITED KINGDOM
Projectors ahoy!
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is home to two of the country’s most famous fighting ships – HMS Victory, from which Admiral Lord Nelson directed operations for the Battle of Trafalgar, and the Mary Rose. The latter now benefits from a purpose-built museum. Landlubber Ian McMurray takes a look
Audiovisual technology is integral to maximising the enjoyment of visitors to the Mary Rose Museum. Picture: Gareth Gardner
[ABOUT THE INSTALLER]
Based in Surrey, UK, Sysco was founded in 1998 by Hugo Roche and Mark Burgin
Services include concept design, detail design, project delivery and technical support
Other recent projects in the field of museums and exhibitions include David Bowie is at the V&A, Seacity Museum in
Southampton and the O2’s British Music Experience
BUILT BETWEEN 1509 and 1511 for the navy of Henry VIII at a time of intermittent war, the Mary Rose was a carrack-type warship. Leading an attack on the invading French, she sank off Portsmouth on the south coast of England on 19 July 1545. The wreck was rediscovered in 1971 – it had first been found in 1836, but it was beyond the abilities of those who found the ship to do anything except explore, and partially loot, it – and raised in 1982. The wreck yielded over 19,000 artefacts which have provided a unique insight into life in Tudor times. A temporary museum was constructed a short distance away from the hull at its resting place in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and, in 2005, a new museum was planned which eventually opened its doors to the public at the end of May 2013. Unsurprisingly, audiovisual technology is integral to maximising the enjoyment of visitors – of whom there have been over 50,000 in the first month of opening alone. Behind that technology is UK integrator Sysco. “We were involved – in an
56 September 2013
informal, advisory capacity – pretty much from the outset,” says Hugo Roche, Sysco’s managing director, noting that his company has an extensive track record in working with museums. “Land Design Studio asked us to provide insight into how technology could be integrated in the museum. The requests for tender came out, and we were fortunate enough to be chosen to undertake the project.”
LOW-KEY PRESENCE Sysco started on site in mid- 2012. “Because it was key to the success of the project that the artefacts, the museum experience and the technology be integrated as carefully as possible, we took the decision that we would have a very low-key presence,” says Roche. “Our strategy was, in effect, to follow the other trades around, integrating our part of the system as they went along. That meant that we were able to quickly identify any potential problems, and work with the other trades to resolve them.” The exhibition itself is
spread across three ‘decks’ - the Main Deck, the Lower
Deck and the Upper Deck. Many thousands of the artefacts are contained within showcases at each end of the galleries or displayed in the virtual hull running parallel with the ship itself. AV systems are used throughout. The brief from the museum
was a fairly straightforward one: it wanted the artefacts and hull to tell their story, and for the museum to give visitors the feeling of being in the Mary Rose environment. “The technology is there to add to the atmosphere – with ambient audio, for example,” notes Roche. “Most of all, it needed to be unobtrusive.” At the heart of the installation are two Dataton Watchout media server systems driving three primary exhibits. The first of these, and perhaps the most impressive – as visitors enter the first gallery – is a film about the sinking of the Mary Rose. This is linked to a film about the raising of the ship which visitors see as they leave the museum. Both are driven by a single Watchout system. The other Watchout system is used to create a multiple blended image of the Cowdray engraving – using
Panasonic projectors – that shows the events of the day the ship sank. Visitors can interact with this exhibit, zooming in to see areas in more detail and reading about what the artist was describing. There are other simple single projections in each gallery showing films of what it would have been like working and living on board the ship. The NEC screens range from simple 20in database units to larger 42in interactive panels mounted within showcases. As well as showing how the different artefacts would have been used, the screens also feature interactive games that allow younger visitors to load and shoot cannons. The majority of screens are built into the showcases, housed behind glass with a touch foil applied to the interior of the glass front of the showcase. Source computers and screens are mounted internally and controlled via the show control system to allow remote access, power switching and fault monitoring.
Audio equipment for the installation came from a variety of sources including
Audica, Feonic, HKM, Panphonics, Sound Directions, Soundtube, Visaton and Tannoy. The master show control system came from Crestron. “This was the first time we’ve used Crestron for this type of application, and we ended up being very happy with it,” says Roche.
VISITOR BASE “It was very important,” continued Roche, “that we were aware of the broad spectrum of visitors that the museum expected to attract. Those could be anything from parties of schoolchildren to scholars and historians – so the technology and content needed to reflect that. For example we used touchscreens to allow visitors to explore the huge array of artefacts, including video clips that demonstrate how they would have been used.” “For sure,” he smiles, “we didn’t want to upset the scholars with in-your-face technology – but at the same time, we needed to capture and hold the attention of younger visitors and teenagers, including a number of interactive games – for instance exploring the use of the ship’s cannons.”
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