The attraction's centrepiece is a 5m deep themed Atlantic reef, contained in a massive seawater tank, and complete with a 10m-long wreck of the 'Kaye Louise' which also provides habitats for indigenous creatures such as conger eels and lobsters.
Areas inside the venue include the Ocean Theatre, a presentation area with an oceanic twist, several rooms containing interactive exhibits and a site-wide walk-through experience, which required a comprehensive sound system and low maintenance speakers that could be mounted outside and over water. The challenge for CGA (who were approached by marine biologist Tim Clements, project manager for the attraction), was to devise and source lighting and sound equipment suitable for an exacting, wet, highly corrosive - and in terms of technology - hostile environment. Chris Gunton liaised with Peter Coles of Lightfactor Sales to devise the equipment specification appropriate to the slightly off-beat circumstances.
Three different types of Apogee's weatherized Near speakers are used across the site. Although it's not anticipated that the speakers themselves will be getting directly wet, a general atmosphere of damp pervades throughout, so their ability to withstand these conditions was a vital factor. The large A8s are in the theatre, Near A6s are used generally throughout the installation, for the walk-through route and for background music, whilst the smaller A2 enclosures are used on some of the exhibits themselves, in the outside preview area and in the low ceiling areas including the shop and restaurant.
'Wild Shores' is the first area of Ocean Frontier encountered by visitors, highlighting the creatures living around the water's shores.
This leads down to the Ocean Theatre, complete with stage, and including a large perspex window which enables the audience to watch the divers in the tanks as part of the presentations. Some basic theatre-style lighting was needed here, so Lightfactor specified six LDR Suono profiles and six LDR Tempo Plus Fresnels. Lightfactor also supplied the Andolite lighting bars onto which they're mounted. The lighting desk is a LightProcessor QCommander; WP6 control panels are also fitted to allow remote control of the lighting, whilst dimming is a combination of LightProcessor's Power Station 1810 and Paradime wall packs.
The diving pool itself is lit with customized Stenmar underwater lights, which are connected to the LightProcessor dimmers and control. The underwater lighting is run at 110 Volts for safety, the Paradime dimmer being chosen because it will run at this voltage without any modifications. CGA also supplied two NEC video projectors, rigged above the main pool window to complement the live underwater action.
The 'Mission Control' area allows visitors to speak to divers in the pool on a one-to-one basis via underwater communication systems, and also control remote 'Sea Robot' vehicles inside the tank. Mission Control also contains a number of displays and interactive exhibits. Many of these are kitted out with their own integrated Near A2 speakers, which are combined with custom multimedia PCs and Denon PMA255 amplification.
In the Gallery area, modern and retro visual technologies are contrasted, utilizing both Optikinetics Solar 250 slide projectors with 6-way carousels and various video/screen sources. The Gallery is a long ramped area wi
