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Surrounded

The new sensory AV

Imagine stepping into a painting instead of simply viewing it. Imagine commanding a vast room of video images from a kiosk, like a conductor at their podium. Imagine yourself surrounded by the shorelines of Oceania. The trend is to dissolve the boundaries between technology and audience, and to utilize both traditional AV equipment and emerging server and IT technology.

At the Museum of Art + Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, KS, the museum team partnered with Diversified in a true collaboration for a new immersive space that opened last month.

The first exhibition, titled Renoir: A Luminous Evolution, implements Meyer immersive audio, 100 Epson projectors spanning 37,000 linear square feet, and the largest U.S. deployment of the Modulo Pi media server to allow visitors to step into Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s iconic artwork.

This partnership also enhances the museum’s De Coded Digital Gallery, featuring 32 Videri digital screens and an outdoor projection system, supported by a Cisco Meraki network to support all of the museum’s experiences and operational needs.

“Our founders wanted to bring the world to our community in ways they’ve never seen before. Together with Diversified, we’ve created something that not only tells stories but invites visitors to become part of them,” said Sydney Bouhaniche, MoA+L’s creative director.

The new museum space, which covers a quarter of the museum’s footprint, is powered by advanced audio-visual systems spanning approximately 37,000 linear square feet to produce about 188 million pixels of animated beauty.

Travis Heitchew, enterprise program manager at Diversified, added, “As soon as visitors enter the immersive wing, they’ll be surrounded by stunning 34-foot projections and incredible sound. It’s not just what you see—it’s what you feel. The scale and immersion create an emotional impact that pulls people in. This is what will make the museum truly unforgettable.”

The exhibition titled Renoir: A Luminous Evolution will use this state-of-the-art setup to immerse visitors in the life and works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In it, visitors will encounter art in ways that go far beyond the traditional gallery format and harness the power of storytelling. Visitors will feel as though they are stepping into the artist’s world, experiencing scenes like a rain-soaked London and watching Renoir’s iconic paintings come to life.

Beyond the museum’s current exhibitions, the technology implemented by Diversified was designed with future versatility in mind. MoA+L anticipates using the space for various events, including lectures, town halls, and weddings, adapting it to the needs of the community.

The collaboration also extends to the museum’s De Coded Digital Gallery, where 32 Videri digital screens will showcase NFT artwork, and an outdoor projection system enhances the ambiance during events. Additionally, Diversified designed and integrated a robust Cisco Meraki network, which supports all the museum’s experiences as well as office operations. Given the unprecedented scale of the project, extensive testing and pre-configuration were conducted at Diversified’s fabrication facility in New Jersey to ensure the technology would function flawlessly upon installation.

The level of collaboration with Diversified has been invaluable,” said Erin Dragotto, Executive Director of the Museum of Art + Light. “Their past work on iconic projects like the Empire State Building made them a clear choice, but it’s their dedication, speed, and precision that made this partnership a success. Together, we’ve been able to make art more interactive and engaging for all generations, and we’re just getting started.”

Curiosity Hall is a new experience at Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Da Vinci Science Center that allows visitors to create content themselves for a massive screen in real time. Ideum led the design and integration of the project, which features a show-stopping interactive projection surface that’s 58 feet wide by 53 feet high – or over 3,000 square feet – that is illuminated by Christie M 4K25 RGB pure laser projectors and GS Series 1DLP laser projectors.

Da Vinci Science Center recently reopened in a new, 67,000-square-foot state-of-the-art downtown location. It features more than 50 interactive exhibits and programs for learners of all ages.

The science center initially approached Ideum in 2021 with a vision for Curiosity Hall, an immersive and participatory theater planned for its new downtown location. “The intent of the theater is to focus on inspiring the curiosity of da Vinci in the three major fields of his study: art, engineering, and the human body,” explains George Hardebeck, director of media systems, Ideum.

With the goal of sparking curiosity amongst its guests, Ideum worked with the science center and planning and design-build firm Roto to create a program that would resonate with visitors. “From there, we designed a technical platform and the infrastructure to support not only the projection screen but also the nine Ideum 43” Drafting II kiosks that allow the audience to create characters for the immersive worlds. We also designed the network infrastructure to support this technically complex system,” says Hardebeck.

Ideum illuminated the massive canvas with three Christie 25,300 lumen M 4K25 RGB pure laser projectors with UHD 4K resolution and five 11,850 lumen DWU1100-GS laser projectors with WUXGA resolution.

“Guests can create 3D interactive content on Ideum’s kiosks, including Renaissance-inspired self-portraits and modern flying machines, or explore the kinetics of the human body, all areas of study throughout da Vinci’s life. Once created, these are launched onto the 3,000 square-foot projection screen and take on a life of their own!” explains Hardebeck. With nine kiosks, the Hall can accommodate 216 users per hour.

Creating a seamless image on the massive canvas was no small feat. Selecting and blending projectors with different resolutions required extensive testing. “To prepare as best as possible, we set up a smaller rig on scaffolding in our offices in New Mexico using small format consumer projectors with similar specs (though much less bright!) to test the pipeline thoroughly. We also built in plenty of time with the final projectors once rigged to work out any problems,” says Hardebeck. The installation took four months and included deployment, testing, and time to review media on the system.

“Prototyping a 3,000 square foot projection isn’t always possible, so we got loaner projectors from Christie multiple times during the two years of production to do scale tests on the exterior surface of a local brewery,” says Hardebeck.

Ideum used the M 4K25 RGB projectors to cover three-quarters of the large surface and used the DWU1100-GS projectors to focus on a smaller section of the surface. This allowed Ideum to expand the projection surface from the original 48 feet to 58 feet and have a higher PPI [pixels per inch] at the floor.

The result has been a hit with the science center and visitors alike. Many visitors remain engaged with the exhibit for the full thirty minutes it takes to cycle through the three programs: Self Portraits, Flying Machines, and Fit Kids.

The Oceanic Refractions experience, housed within the Silent Green event venue in Berlin, is a multimedia installation aimed at immersing audiences in climate change and its impact on the Oceania community. The moving narrative weaves testimonies from Oceania natives and the sounds of their natural environments—from the bustling life of coral reefs to the serene rustle of mangroves.

To create a 360-degree multi-sensory environment, FrameWorks, a multimedia system designer and integrator from Ireland, used 16 Panasonic projectors, aligned and driven by a single Screenberry media server, to create a seamless video display across two 360-degree cylindrical screens and an octagon-shaped dome; a quartet of Datapath Fx4 units split the signal from the media server to 16 WUXGA outputs.

The auditory journey was further enhanced by 360-degree videography, kinetic seating that mimicked the ocean’s movement, and olfactory effects that transported visitors to the shorelines of Fiji, Kiribati, and the Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea. The combination of the single server and Datapath video wall controllers used to manage playback across all three screens simplified the setup and ensured a seamless extension of the immersive environment from floor to ceiling. Increased cost and energy efficiency were additional bonuses.

“We’ve worked closely with Front Pictures, the developers of the Screenberry media server, for many years on groundbreaking and inspiring projects,” Andy Lee, senior international sales manager at Datapath, said. “This latest solution shows how multimedia installations can be simpler and more reliable through the use of Screenberry and Datapath products.”

To output visuals onto two circular panoramas, each more than 32 feet (10 meters) in diameter and nine feet (3 meters) high, Screenberry aligned eight Panasonic PT-RZ970 projectors utilizing a combination of automatic and manual calibration. To map the 32-foot domed ceiling, the media server auto-calibrated an array of eight Panasonic PT-DZ780 projectors.

Using an alternative to the multi-server system is a single-server approach. Screenberry’s highly efficient video engine uses every bit of power from the media-server hardware to process extremely high-resolution media in real time. As a result, it can reportedly handle many more displays per single machine than most other solutions available.

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