According to the Natural History Museum: "The opening of the Darwin Centre represents the future for the Natural History Museum as a world leader in researching the burning issues facing humans and the natural world. The Darwin Centre unleashes the Natural History Museum's life as a major science infrastructure into the public arena, offering a voice of authority on the natural world and inspiring better care of our planet."
IVC was contracted to design and implement the technology to create a 64 seat, state-of-the-art communication centre for the general public. Known as the Attenborough Studio, the project leads the way in educational presentational technology and includes five full sized digital screens and 5.1 surround sound.
"Along with key manufacturers and consultants including Cultural Innovations, Panasonic, Medialon, Bose, Adder, Dell, Halivision and Paradigm we have worked together to develop a facility which is essentially a broadcast studio and presentation suite in one," explains Patrick Stewart-Blacker, business development manager at IVC Media. "The provision to integrate live audio and an outside broadcast feed or fly away standard definition video conference system, will enable scientists working within the Darwin Centre research labs to present their work to the general public for the first time, which is a particularly exciting proposition."
Of the media displays, the primary presentation screen is the 130" dnp NWA rear projection screen from Paradigm AV (with 3200mm focal length) - trimmed to provide a viewing area of 2561mm x 1456mm.
With a projection booth already pre-determined, IVC's creative team needed to maximize the narrow dimensions in consultation with Paradigm. Their solution was to provide an Easy-Erect dual-mirror projection rig mounted vertically, folding the beams from the Projection Design HD projector off the mirrors.
Stewart-Blacker said: "This is the kind of advice and assistance we have come to expect from Paradigm since we first started buying rear projection screens."
In terms of content the screen will be expected to handle a number of feeds, including interactive pre-automated shows, live presentations with HD camera feeds from a lab in the museum - plus inputs from satellite codecs, up-converted videoconferencing hubs and purpose-created computer graphics.
IVC have also specified HaiVision low-latency MAKO-HD, designed for the challenges of telepresence and interactive broadcast contribution. This will allow scientists working in their lab to communicate in HD and answering questions from the audience without actually having to be present.
"There are a lot of broadcast feeds and many signal paths and the complexity of the signal paths has been staggering," says Stewart-Blacker. Switching is via a 32 x 32 Extron matrix switcher with Panasonic camera control and vision mixing."
There will be a feature on the Attenborough Studio in the Natural History Museum's Darwin Centre in the October issue of Lighting&Sound magazine.
(Jim Evans)
