MUSEUM DESIGN
Objects are brought to life through theatrical stories
SHIP SHAPE T
he Sheepvaart museum, or Amsterdam
Alex McCuaig
Maritime Museum, showcases the last 400 years of Dutch Maritime History. After a refurbishment initiative to position
it at the cutting edge of global museum interpretation, it reopened in October 2011. MET Studio designed the £1m (1.2m,
US$1.6m) Dutch Maritime Experience, which covers 600sq m (6,500sq ft) of the total 4,000sq m (43,000sq ft) museum space. The brief was to create a fully immersive visitor walk-through experience based simply around three objects: letters from a teenage sailor who was lost at sea; a blanket a little girl was wrapped in when rescued from a passenger ship struck by
Dutch Maritime history is told using 21st century design techniques at the Sheepvaart museum. By Kathleen Whyman
a German torpedo; and the Naval depot building that’s now the Scheepvaart museum. “We brought the objects to life through the stories and the people behind them in a theatrical setting,” says MET Studio’s founder and chair Alex McCuaig.
FOUR ENVIRONMENTS The design is broken into four immersive environments. The fi rst deals with the building – visitors enter a modern day room, which transforms before their eyes and takes them 400 years into the past to the golden age of Dutch maritime history. Virtual characters are introduced, who set the scene for a perilous sea journey. The second area places visitors on the
deck of a ship, surrounded by 360 degree HD moving images projected onto a 7m (23ft)-high AV screen. The audience goes on a voyage spanning 300 years, where
they encounter stormy seas, ferocious sea battles, legends of ghost ships and the First World War. “As the stories and action unfold, we gently rock and undulate the virtual horizon to create the illusion that the visitor’s at sea,” says McCuaig. The third area places visitors below the
deck of a passenger ship as it’s struck by a German U-Boat torpedo. Moving scenery and virtual characters are used to set the scene and show the dramatic rescue of the small girl wrapped in the blanket. The fourth environment displays an uplifting and positive scene of returning home from the sea journey. A combination of AV and infi nity mirrors creates an animated view of returning to the Amsterdam Docks and being greeted by all of the characters introduced throughout the experience. Finally, the virtual characters fade and the real objects from the stories remain.
THE PRODUCTION The project’s AV, lighting and network design work was done by local integration fi rm Rapenburg Plaza. Global design and fabrication fi rm Hypsos also worked on the project. The exhibit Voyage at Sea is a fi ve-room, 20-minute, immersive walk-through cinematic
experience in which visitors are taken on a journey through fi ve centuries of Dutch maritime history. Its centrepiece is a 360-degree, oval-shaped projection which uses 10 edge-blended projectors with wide-angle lenses, along with snap-on cartridges custom- designed by Rapenburg Plaza for additional image fi ltering. Content was provided by Amsterdam-based Tungsten AV Designers to a design
Visitors go on a sea voyage on board the deck of a ship
36
concept by Tinker Imagineers of Utrecht. The fi lm’s played back through QuickTime ProRes software and is run through fi ve dual-motherboard PCs, each running two licenses of Dataton’s Watchout multi-display production and playback system. The Watchout machines, which are located in the museum’s central server room alongside the content servers, lighting controllers and network switches, provide eight tracks of audio. These are routed through a Richmond SoundMan server to create the sound track.
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital AM 2 2012 ©cybertrek 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86