Natural History Museum: Darwin gets interactive treatment

Ever wanted to follow in the footsteps of the great explorers by finding new species of animals or plants? Well, thanks to the creative use of av technology, visitors to the newly-built Darwin Centre in London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) can watch a live feed from the ocean floor or plan an expedition with renowned botanists of the past.

The technology has been put in place to educate and entertain, but also to have an impact on visitors long after their visit ends. There is so much technology under the glass roof that Andre Ingram, systems designer at integrator IVC Media, has called the museum’s Attenborough Studio the most complex installation in one room he has ever worked on in 35 years in the industry.

The Darwin Centre boasts an impressive cocoon-like exterior design (by Scandinavian architect C F Moller), which incorporates eight storeys, 65m in length. It cost £78m and was funded – in part – by the Heritage Lottery Fund (£20.5m), the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (£10.7m) and The Wellcome Trust (£10m). It is the biggest development at the museum since it opened in 1881.

The NHM is expecting 2,500 visitors a day, so what can they expect from the new attraction?

The new wing features two areas: the Darwin Centre and the neighbouring Attenborough Studio. IVC Media designed and implemented the a-v in the Attenborough Studio, with Sysco contracted for all the a-v hardware on the rest of the project, including inside the cocoon.

The first exhibit visitors see upon entering the new wing is a climate-change wall, a 12m wide mix of video screens showing films and graphics spotlighting Earth’s changing climate. Motion sensors built into the ceiling bring the display to life when visitors pass the wall, and synchronised back lighting comes into effect when each of the three films (themed land, ice and ocean) begins.

Although the cocoon has eight storeys, the visitor experience takes up only two floors – the rest houses the scientists. The first noticeable aspect of the cocoon is its internal shape, which features a succession of curved surfaces – something that can prove a logistical nightmare for a-v contractors. With the cocoon featuring 35 projectors, Sysco had an installation challenge. Luckily for managing director Hugo Roche, the NHM was not insistent on perfectly projected images. ‘The client was very forgiving about projection, and the media was created to be sympathetic to the fact that there wasn’t a perfect rectangular surface to project on to.’

There are more than 40 interactives on display, the vast majority of which are timed to last about two minutes. The standout interactive allows visitors to plan a famous voyage of discovery with botanists from the past. The table features overhead projection with a touch-sensitive screen fitted with capacitive touch overlays (a recurring technology used throughout the experience). Users have their photo taken, and the image is inserted onto a real NHM ID badge, which then allows them to begin the experience. Once a mission is chosen, users have to pack their bags by dragging each correct piece of equipment into the holdall using finger control. All exhibits are on sleep mode until visitors pass by and activate them. Then, four working NHM scientists guide users through the particular tasks, either via life-size projections or on NEC LCD displays.

One of the most successful parts of the cocoon is the NaturePlus card, which allows users to continue the experience at home. By running the barcode on the card across the NaturePlus symbol, users can select information they want to keep from any of the interactives they have used. They can then access this information via the NHM website. ‘One of the things that people get here is information overload, so by doing this they can keep exploring (in their own time),’ says Ailsa Barry, head of interactive media, NHM. ‘It also links you to a community where you can join blogs or bug identification forums and get updates from our scientists. The card is your own personal journey,’ she adds.

Problem-solving

The two problems that Sysco faced in the cocoon were both down to the architecture – how to stop audio spill and how to fit “hidden” cabling in such an impressive building. The first was solved by repetitive testing until the right size and output speakers were found for the allotted space. A variety of discreet mini line arrays (including the Vyper KV 50) were installed to give directional sound where required. The cabling proved so tricky that it was outsourced to a specialist cabling company.

The second new section of the Darwin Centre is the Attenborough Studio. At first glance it looks like any other presentation theatre, but the studio is anything but run-of-the mill. It seats 64 people and has a daily programme of events. IVC’s design is built around shows taking place without the need for a technical crew present.

All the lighting and audio settings have been programmed to meet specific types of presentations. When the studio is booked, the scheduler automatically pre-loads the correct av settings for that show, and the presenter will also only see the controls needed for that particular presentation on the handheld control device. CCTV has been installed so that the a-v team can correct the audio mix remotely over IP anywhere in the museum – the cameras enable them to see any potential blindspots in the room.

The Attenborough Studio is full HD (1080i), with five HD cameras, solid state HD players, five full-size digital screens and 5.1 surround sound. The primary screen uses a 130in DNP NWQ rear projection screen from Paradigm AV, trimmed to provide a viewing area of 2561 x 1456mm. With a projection booth already pre-determined, IVC needed to maximise the narrow dimensions in consultation with Paradigm. The solution was to provide an easy-errect dual-mirror projection rig mounted vertically, folding the beams from the projectiondesign cineo 30 HD projector off the mirror.

The studio has four external connections into the auditorium. The first is for a Polycom HD videoconferencing system linked to the superJANET education and research network. The second is for a HaiVision Mako HD codec, which handles two channels of video (one HD, one SD) and four audio channels. The third is for an ViewCast Osprey streaming media card so that HD Windows Media content can be streamed to the NHM’s website.

The final connection is for a Hughes BGAN satellite video conferencing kit with TH4 Tandberg codec built into a Pelican case. The latter has been used to stream live footage into the studio from the Atlantic Ocean seabed, the first time continuous live images have ever been shown in this way. ‘The provision to integrate live audio and an outside broadcast feed or fly away SD videoconferencing system will enable scientists to present their work to the general public for the first time,’ explains Bryan Edwards, IVC technical sales director.

Two DSPs help to look after the audio in the studio; a Biamp Audioflex does the acoustic echo cancellation and automatic microphone mixing, with a Bose DSP to execute Dolby decoding for the features films shown, room equalisation and delays. The projectors have a one frame delay and the video mixer has a two-frame delay so the Bose controls the delays to enable lip-synching.

Interactivity

The studio also features a bespoke interactive touchscreen terminal in every seat. The units can send votes to the presenter, and the presenter can also send content to each system from a visualiser or camera. Each handset is individually controlled by its own PC, and this extra processing power means the handsets also feature dictionaries and glossaries and can display extra pictures from the presentation. The whole system was tested off-site with the main install taking three weeks.

As is the case in many large a-v projects, the original client brief for the studio was only a part of the finished product. NHM had specified (heavy and power-hungry) tablets or palmtops for voting and didn’t request videoconferencing (the client wanted Vbrick live streaming but relented once the improved quality of an HD system was demo’ed). What the museum has in place now, in the studio and the cocoon, is a series of installations to bring the natural world to all its visitors, wherever they live, way beyond a one-off visit to London’s Cromwell Road. The investment the NHM has made will ensure the visit to the site is just the launchpad for an ongoing interactive interest in the wonders of natural history around us.

KIT LIST

- BSS 3088 – 8 BSS 3088 Soundweb

- Cloud CX-A4 – 16 Cloud CX-A4 and 2 CX-850 amplifiers

- Christie DS305W projectors

- Mitsubishi MD2000U – A total of 17 Mitsubishi MD2000U and WD2000U DLP projectors

- NEC LCD 3210 – 18 NEC large format LCD DVI displays

- Dicoll Chassis Mount W19L300-CHS – 33 Dicoll LCD Displays

- DVS Blade HD – 10 Blade DVS SD/HD Media Servers

- DVS PC 2 – 35 High Spec DVS PCs

- Gefen FM1000HD – 55 Gefen DVI Fibre Extenders

- JBL Control 24 – 16 JBL Control 24s, 11 Control 25s and 4 26CTs

- Panasonic PT-DW1006 – Panasonic PT- DW100 and PT-DW5100e DLP WXGA projectors

- Panphonic Directional – 7 Panphonic dirtecional loudspeakers

- Visaton FRS 10 – 28 Visaton compact loudspeakers

- Visual Planet – 26 Visual Planet Touch Foils