The wooden-framed glass cases of mineral samples, stuffed animals and neatly-pinned insects, have been replaced by interactive exhibits that recount the history of Australia, its peoples and its region, using the entire panoply of contemporary display and production technologies. Museum operations manager Craig Gamble (who started life in technical production for the performing arts), considers the museum spaces to be of three types.
There are the circulation and orientation spaces, which include the foyers that house permanent displays of iconic objects such as a whale skeleton and a tram. There are permanent exhibitions (5-10 year lifespans), and finally, there are temporary exhibition spaces. Each type of space has been provided with display infrastructure appropriate to the level of flexibility required.
All 12 general display areas are configured with the same basic infrastructure. Overhead is a grid of standard steel scaffold (48.4mm) tube at 3.5m centres. The load limit on the grid is 250kg per linear metre, a figure that has proved more than adequate during the first year of operations. A second grid of paired 50mm ducts, spanning the length and width of the space at 3.5m centres, lies beneath the floor. Services running through the duct grid include mains power, lighting, audio, data, video, water, gas and satellite downlink.
Lighting for the museum was originally conceived as being a three-tier system consisting of separate base building lighting, permanent display lighting and temporary display lighting. However, during the tendering process for the various stages of construction and fit-out, a change occurred.
Local systems integrator Lightmoves succeeded with a series of bids based around a Dynalite integrated control system for the entire building. The system core is a central desktop computer running Dynalite’s Control Soft software. In addition to interfacing with the building automation system, it supervises the Dynet network backbone, which has bridges connecting to the spur networks that run each area. Base building lighting is controlled by 400 channels of Dynalite Dimtek dimmers and 200 channels of Dimtek contactors, while permanent display installations are controlled by a further 1,000 Dimtek dimmers. Temporary galleries have LSC iPRO production dimmers, which can be controlled by either a local console, their internal EEPROM store, or a DMX output from the Dynet network.
There are no audio or video replay systems in any of the galleries, as all media is sourced from a centrally-managed Media and Venue Management System (MVMS) from PIVoD Technologies. This provides over 750 Mb/s of concurrent streamed video, audio and multimedia, distributed to over 35 clients, providing more than 80 streams of MPEG2 at bit rates of 5-15 Mb/s. The MVMS is based around two racks, each containing a Quad 500mHz Zeon CPU server, fitted with 4 Gb/s Network Interface Cards. These connect to a Sun A5200 22-disc Fibre Channel array, with the potential for outputting around 1 Gb/s.
In a museum situation, where a different design and curatorial team may prepare each exhibit, the potential exists for an unmanageable proliferation of equipment types and display systems. The approach at the Melbourne Museum has been to define the Lateral Display System (LDS), a menu of approved equipment and suppliers. LDS specifications have been produced for lighting, signage, multimedia, audio-visual and showcases. This has enabled in-depth stocking of spare parts and consumables, ensuring that all displays can be maintained at their original design specification for their duration.
The distance between museums, musicals, corporate displays, shopping centres and theme parks continues to grow narrower by the day.
Andy Ciddor
