Dataton, renowned Swedish show control developer and manufacturer, has provided Dataton WATCHOUT™ to enable seamless blending of projected images for the ‘Ballgowns: British Glamour since 1950’ exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
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The exhibition in the newly renovated Fashion Galleries showcases six decades of British fashion design and includes some iconic ballgowns including Princess Diana’s 1989 ‘Elvis Dress’ designed by Catherine Walker. Images are projected onto the alcoves of the building in an AV installation engineered and installed by Electrosonic using four pairs of vertically stacked projectiondesign® F32 series projectors.
“The exhibition is designed like a kind of huge wedding cake, with the circular display taking its cue from the splendid domed structure overhead, ” says Robert Simpson of Electrosonic, who provided on-site integration of the AV components from an initial system design by Sysco. “The items from the V&A’s permanent collection are on the lower level while dresses that have been loaned to the museum temporarily are on the upper one.
“These alcoves make an unusual and spectacular projection surface, but because they have a compound curvature, we needed to warp each pair of projected images as well as blendthem seamlessly together. This is what WATCHOUT enables us to do, and the results are very striking.”
Fredrik Svahnberg, Marketing Director, Dataton, adds: “The museum market has always been a strong one for WATCHOUT when it comes to new-build attractions, but now we are also seeinglong-established facilities embracing our technology as a means of exploiting the natural beauty of their traditional architecture.
“The V&A is a great example of this. The seamless blending and geometry correction features of WATCHOUT have allowed the museum to use projection in a way they could not otherwise have imagined, and we are delighted that our long-standing relationship with Electrosonic has created an installation of which all of us on the AV technology side can be extremely proud.”
Photograph credit: © Electrosonic & © projectiondesign
