As visual art installation specialists we often work with artists and venues to technically manage audio visual exhibitions, this is a behind the scenes look into how we do it.
This visual art installation at New Art Exchange was split across 3 spaces, a large open gallery space and two smaller secondary galleries. Our first task is to work within CAD software to visualise the artists’ ideas, we make sure the work fits the gallery space by drawing everything to scale in 3D renders. We share these renders with the artist and make amendments along the way until they are signed off and ready to be installed.
Main Gallery Space
The main gallery space included 12 large freestanding MDF painted sculptures, the front side shows a hand drawn pastel image with the backside painted black with a single hand drawn image of a bird. When positioning these delicate sculptures we have to ensure our hands do not smudge the artwork or leave fingerprints on the white painted surfaces. We wrapped these objects in white acid free tissue paper to protect the work, they are not unwrapped until launch day!
The main space also contained several A/V elements, firstly x2 Epson 6K projectors were used with x2 Brightsign media players to create a seamless blended image of the artists film work. These projectors are hung via Unicol long drop projection mounts from the concrete ceiling to minimise any keystone of the projected image. With the artists guidance we installed sand and rocks in-front of the projection screen that ran seamlessly into the film work.
The second A/V element is a 4 channel sound installation that needs to fill the space with audio from 4 different audio sources. We again utilise the Brightsign media players to continually loop audio and route it out to 4 separate directional speakers that are hung from the ceiling of the gallery.
Secondary Gallery Space
The secondary space is used to display 8 video animations and a grid hang of images. We use 8 NEC 43inch commercial display screens with 8 connected Brightsign players to seamlessly loop the animation videos. During the wall fabrication we install power, data and video cables to ensure that no cables are visible once the 8 screens are hung along the wall. Our secret weapon when hanging multiple images in a grid is the laser level, simply line up laser along the wall and measure the distance between the screws.
Mezzanine Gallery Space
The mezzanine space is transformed into a 360 interactive projection space utilising x6 Panasonic PT-RZ970 9K lumen laser projectors hung from bespoke unistrut brackets to keep them as tight to the ceiling as possible. In order to achieve the super short throw we used the the ET – D75LE95 and contracted temporary walls within the gallery to fit the bespoke projection size.
Underneath the white carpet is 12 pressure pads that trigger sounds and video depending on which pressure pad is activated. So depending on which part of the room the audience stood the soundscape and video would react to this. The projected image continued the theme of hand drawn animation with a super high contrast image creating depth between the pencil lines and the white background.
Result
For a detailed video walkthrough of the exhibition spaces please view the video below.
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