Community reinforces Story of the Forest
- Details
The museum’s Glass Rotunda currently hosts an immersive digital art installation, titled Story of the Forest. It is inspired by the National Museum of Singapore’s prized collection, the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings. This prized collection is brought to life through a spectacular interactive digital presentation in which visitors are transported to the natural ecology of 19th century Malaya, viewed through the eyes of artists of that time and re-imagined today through digital art and technology.
In 2014, the museum closed off the Glass Rotunda, to explore new and innovative ways of showcasing the country’s social history and cultural history with industry partners. This resulted in the museum’s collaboration with the Japanese digital art collective teamLab, while Singapore-based Broadcast Professional Pte Ltd was chosen for the system integration, content delivery and project management, with an emphasis on ensuring an unforgettable immersive experience for visitors.
Visitors to the Glass Rotunda walk across a sky bridge to be greeted by the top end of the dome and enter the 170m-spiral passageway that leads them to the Lower Rotunda. The top of the structure projects the infinitely expanding universe, where animated flowers of the region bloom and change over time as guests walk through it. The dome features 17 projectors in the 15m high by 12m wide space.
The spiral passageway brings visitors through an interactive forest, inhabited by the animals found in Singapore and the region. As visitors walk down the passageway the scene changes from morning to noon and then to night, also reflecting the different local climates. Upon entering the Lower Rotunda, the visitors come back into the night scene.
Alongside the projectors, the spiral passageway also features Community loudspeakers, which create the appropriate audio soundscape that complements the images projected. Audio has also been used to create additional interactivity. Broadcast Professional has integrated a feature whereby a high frequency signal can be captured by a visitor’s smartphone microphone, enabling them to pinpoint their location within the various zones of the 170m wide projection.
“A total of 42 projectors have been installed along the spiral passageway with Community DS5 loudspeakers playing a critical role in the experience,” said John Paul Tan, Broadcast Professional’s sales manager. “The Community D Series surface mount loudspeakers are low profile, aesthetically modern and discreet, with dynamic sound quality and excellent intelligibility. With space being a premium, these loudspeakers were the ideal solution for this installation as they fit seamlessly into the environment and provide outstanding sound quality.”
“This has been a very interesting project for us. It was a truly collaborative effort, working with the Museum and teamLab to create this very large interactive digital canvas. The content and the technology had to work hand-in-hand to provide a memorable visitor experience and we are pleased to have been involved in this one-of-a-kind project,” concluded John Paul Tan.
(Jim Evans)
