Wednesday 19 December 2012

Construction and More

This is a project that I worked on with Anya Sirota, a Prof at the Taubman School of Architecture.  In brief, it was a film festival in a park on the East side of Detroit.  They screened every documentary or other films about Detroit.

I worked on the design with her and her team to figure out what kind of equipment made sense and how to integrate it into their designs and then coordinated the AV support.

This is a panoramic view of the whole layout (a 4000x1000 image is here):


On the left is the Plaza.
We set up some giant cable spools as tables in the small parking lot.  This is also where the food vendors set up.  And at night, there was a giant disco ball (photo below!) made of hula hoops, strung with lights, and hung from the cherry picker you can see on the left side here.

In the middle is the Theater.
The inside of the purple shell you can see is painted black to minimize stray light on the screen in there.  The entire roster of movies was screened there continuously.

On the right is the Forum.
Here they convened panels of 4-6 "Discourse Jockeys" to discuss focused topics around Detroit and a selected group of films that were screened in part at the start of each panel. You can see some of the flat screens that were used to screen the films.

It took a lot of work to build the "imaging detroit" site in Perrien Park in Detroit, Michigan.  It all started at Anya Sirota's barn & yard on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, but my photos begin at NCRC when we were picking up gear.

A flatbed of flat panels, and a flatbed of everything else.

While the base structures were built in Ann Arbor and tucked to the site in Detroit, 
there was still a lot of 'finish' work to do on site.

Missy painting the inside of the "Theater" black.

Me under the Forum backdrop, setting up the extensive 
RGBHV video distribution system (right in front of me) 
and sound system (foreground).

Front of the video rack...

...back of the video rack.


This shows the Theater (left) and the Forum (right) from the vantage point of the parking lot,
where the Food Court (vendors) and the giant Disco Ball were located.

Building and fitting in the inserts at the Forum.

Setting up the sound system for the Forum area.
We decided to go with a central stack, aimed out to all directions.

The Forum in action!  The panels in the rear are what I was feeding,
although they don't show up as well in this photo as they did in the park.

One of my favorite features: the Pop Up Snack Boys!
They were there to pass out free food from the vendors to anyone that was not able to buy it.  
A really great idea.

The giant Disco Ball!  
It was suspended from the cherry picker you see in the other photos, 
at the far end of the parking lot/ Food Court.

The full panorama of the site once built - the one at the top of this entry is better & bigger!.