Pioneer powers cooling tower installation
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As well as an immersive three-day arts and music event, the Horst Festival extends to a two-month long exhibition which features in-situ art installations in public spaces. This year the exhibition was based on the ASIAT site in Vilvoorde, north of Brussels, a former military base complete with six hectares of urban space, 20 warehouses within a maze of corridors and two huge cooling towers. It was inside one of these towers that artist Emeka Ogboh placed his renowned installation The Way Earthly Things Are Going and KAGE Audio deployed Pioneer Pro Audio XY-Series speakers to reinforce the essential sound element. The installation has proved to be very popular, drawing national TV coverage in Belgium.
Simon Nowak of Onkruid, the commissioning team responsible, reports, “This was an installation that had been on show in smaller form in the Tate Modern, which combines multi-channel audio with a real time video feed of the Stock Exchange on a large LED wall. The immersive audio uses 12 individual audio tracks of polyphonic Greek chanting, where each track requires a separate speaker in order to accomplish the spatial experience as the visitor walks on a temporarily installed path.
“Placing it inside a huge cooling tower presented a number of challenges, not least the fact that equipment needed to be lifted by hand 15m up into the tower. There was a shortage of anchor points on the internal structure and a distinct absence of a viable floor, so we needed small speakers that were light in weight had enough power and throw for the huge interior. It was important that we could also maintain the sensation of different sound sources coming from different points and not becoming a clutter of noise. The speakers also had to be aesthetically discreet in order to maintain the pristine look of the tower walls.”
The Onkruid team looked into a number of options and opted for a Pioneer Pro XY-Series system comprising 12 XY 81 speakers driven by Powersoft amplification. Pioneer Pro Audio’s European sales manager Kristin Van Haute was able to source the required speakers at relatively short notice and also directed the team towards KAGE Audio, who have worked on a wide range of Pioneer Pro Audio installations in the territory.
Simon Nowak continues: “KAGE were a great help with what was a very technically challenging installation. The combination of the XY-81s and Powersoft amps really delivered above our expectations on power and sound quality. The installation has been in place for well over a month with no technical hiccups whatsoever and was completed on time and within our budget, we’re really happy with the results delivered by Pioneer Pro Audio and KAGE.”
(Jim Evans)
