BME is a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of popular music in Britain. Opened in March, the exhibit is a high-tech, interactive music presentation housed across 22,000sq.ft on the top floor of The O2 bubble in London.
Lighting design for BME is by David Atkinson of David Atkinson Lighting Design (DALD) who incorporated 26 Martin smartMAC colour changing luminaires - supplied by AC Lighting and installed by DES - into the exhibit's Pre Show and Exit Show areas.
Before visitors access the main BME exhibit, a Pre Show area gives a brief five minute audio visual introduction about BME and how to view the various areas with the exhibition's Smarticket system, which allows the visitor to activate the interactive elements of the exhibition and also to register further interest in specific BME features.
In this Pre Show area, suspended from a high level box truss, Martin smartMAC moving heads are used to illuminate the audience for walk-in and walk-out. The lighting was programmed by Stewart Parker.
The music experience is rounded off with a virtual concert, a splicing together of some of the biggest acts to come out of the UK for an impressionable aural experience. DALD worked closely with the media producers ISO & Land Design to add an almost three dimensional immersive quality to the Exit Show video. After extensive programming from Stewart Parker, dynamic lighting looks from smartMACs, as well as strobes and LED lights, add a realistic quality to the experience. These are used through haze effects within the space.
"The small size of the smartMACs helped to pull the space into perspective when seen in conjunction with the complex video sequences," Atkinson commented.
For more on the BME, see the May 2009 issue of Lighting&Sound magazine.
(Jim Evans)
