Digital Projection’s award-winning HIGHlite Laser II projector has been selected by integrator DJ Willrich to sit at the heart of a brand new visitor attraction, The British Music Experience in Liverpool, UK. In a city synonymous with musical greats from The Beatles to Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the new interactive museum has transformed the Grade II listed Cunard Building and is dedicated to showcasing the rich heritage of British music through costumes, instruments, performance and memorabilia. Digital Projection technology is harnessed throughout to complement the artefacts and create a fully immersive experience.
The critically acclaimed venue takes visitors on a chronological journey of British music history from 1945 to the present day, as told in eight state-of-the-art interactive exhibition galleries. At the heart of the exhibit space is the main stage show featuring a five-minute custom-produced performance by Boy George, created by Graham English and Co, and a large scale stage hologram, made possible by the HIGHlite Laser II, powered by a 7thSense Delta Nano-SDI media server.
Widely praised for its stand-out features and performance by the AV community, the HIGHlite Laser II is specifically designed for environments needing a long-life projection solution with installation flexibility, inspiring brightness and remarkable lifetime cost of ownership. Delivering a stunning 13,000 lumens from a stable solid-state laser light source which eliminates the need for expensive maintenance and lamp replacement cycles, it is capable of producing over 20,000 hours of illumination that far exceeds any lamp-based product.
The team at Digital Projection worked in tandem with Josh Miller from DJ Willrich on the project. The latter confirms, “The HIGHlite Laser II is really the perfect choice for this type of setting. The combination of an exceptional bright, long-life illumination source with a host of other precision features such as edge blending, multi-projector tiling and projector controller software allowing full management and operation of multiple projectors from a single centralised PC based application, and you have a truly fantastic projector solution for a venue such as this where a seamless experience is paramount.”
Operable in portrait and landscape mode, the HIGHlite Laser II features a diverse selection of both fixed and zoom lenses and extensive lens shift to ensure integrators have maximum flexibility with respect to projector placement. Developed with ‘Fit and Forget’ directive, installers can deploy the product quickly thanks to the easy to use software which dramatically reduces set up and configuration time, and with minimal maintenance throughout the lifetime of the display.
“Alongside outstanding quality, we know that reliability and long-term performance are also key in professional settings.” adds Mark Wadsworth at Digital Projection. “We provide a full five year/20,000 hours warranty for our projectors, such is our confidence in our unrivalled product offering.”
In addition to the HIGHlite Laser II, two 8,500 lumens Digital Projection E-Vision Laser 8500 laser projectors are deployed to create an impactful first impression in the reception area, combining to create a giant Union Jack. A further eight 6,000 lumens E-Vision Laser 6500 projectors drive rotating images of different UK pop stars using Dataton Watchpax 2 software in a series of arched window bays to separate the different exhibition zones.
Integrator DJ Willrich was selected to give The British Music Experience a full technology and content overhaul, following the move from its original home inside London’s O2 between 2009 and 2014 to its new iconic Liverpool base. Josh Miller, Director for the company, says of the refresh, “The projection technology used for the London BME became dated since the installation in 2009, and we needed the projected video of Boy George on the HoloNet screen to be bright and punchy, visitors get up really close to the display so it had to be visually stunning from all angles and distances. Digital Projection’s HIGHlite Laser II was the obvious and best choice to help us achieve this.”
Richard Brown, CTO at 7thSense added, “It’s been a pleasure to work with another forward-thinking technology partner such as Digital Projection for this project and we’re really proud of the incredible, immersive experience that our media server delivers together with the HIGHlite Laser II.”
Olly Taylor, Technical Supervisor at The British Music Experience, concludes: “If you think about music, it has to be inclusive, that’s very important for us here. We want people to come, but we also want people to come back.”
