The museum's 17 rooms of exhibits tell the story of soccer in Brazil, from its early days as a pastime for the educated elite to its contemporary status as a multi-million dollar industry. While the icons of the Brazilian game down the years are very much in evidence, emphasis is also given to the nature of soccer as an everyday passion in city streets across the country. Video plays a key role in demonstrating both extremes -with footage of classic games and modern heroes contrasting with clips of youngsters kicking a ball around on improvised playing surfaces in backyards and wastelands.
The museum's video playback devices are as varied as its content. There are 117 flat-screen monitors from 15 to 60 inches in size, and some 55 projectors, from 2,000 to 15,000 lumens in brightness. Dataton's long-term partner in Brazil, KJPL Arbyte, acted as systems integrator for the project and used over 9,000m of video and data cable to connect everything together.
KJPL's Peter Lindquist, who worked with his colleague Bernardo Nicola to turn the museum designers' creative vision into a technical reality, admits that "the scope of the project and the technical challenges it posed were enormous". KJPL's approach, however, was that "whatever the client imagined, we would find the technological solution to meet their requests".
With its ability to orchestrate all image sources, blend projected images together and control shows in a user-programmable timeline, Dataton's Watchout software provided the museum with an open-ended solution that is as easy to update as it is to control. This is important because, as Lindquist explains, "The whole museum is controlled from a central data centre, making it possible to re-program any part of the museum from one location, and for equipment status to be monitored from that same location."
In total there are 104 Watchout display stations used on the site, interfacing with the museum's Medialon Manager show-control backbone, and using a number of new features provided by version 4 of Watchout.
Michael Engström, director of sales, Dataton, concludes, "Our long working relationship with KJPL really paid dividends at the Museu do Futebol. They trusted us and our software, and the commitment of both our companies to long-term support has ensured a very successful relationship. Over half a million people are expected to visit the museum this year, and I think it's fair to say that success could not have been achieved without us."
(Jim Evans)
