Displaying Beach

Our aim

To represent the beach and beach boulevard in Carúpano at Easter time. Anthropology students, who were there, felt that beach activities were as important as the cordial catholic Easter celebration. People could spend all their day there, following easily identifyable routine. They could move straight from the beach to the church and back. There was no strict distinction between secular and sacred spaces and behaviour.

In our design concept we trie to define and display most common aspects of people's activities on the beach as well as to restore beach ambience itself. We are trying to create cheerful and easy party and leisure time atmosphere and to involve visitors into it inviting them to use all the items and objects they find in the exhibition.

Senses we stimulate

Visual, auditory, tactile.

The outlook and soundscape of the beach

Presence of the sea and people on the beach is created through soundscape and visual media. Sounscape will include sound of waves, moving sounds of people walking by and stereos they carry. The moving sound objects capabilities are exploited with random sound events like a portable stereo being carried to another place, someone running past the guest or someone throwing a ball to somebody.

We will have some objects representing beach as well: palmtree, hammock, lace of sand along left side wall and big print of ocean panorama at the end of the corridor, so that people from the very begining could locate themselves on the beach.

We will also have photo pictures exhibition, but the most immersive part will be interactive video projection, displaying peoples activities on the beach, at the intersection of corridors. We decided to make several short video loops out of huge amount of video material, which would form a timeline based narrative. Changing one loop to other requires visitors involvement and action. As guest approaches video screen, s/he sees peaceful view of the beach and a touch sensitive 'tambores' drum in front of the screen. If s/he startsto play or touches the drum it triggers the playback of short stories, the next video loop starts going and changes to following ones as long, as visitor is interested. In that way guest must put some effort to get to know the whole story. If visitor passes by without recognizing, that video is interactive, some rapid change in the picture happens or somebody shouts out loud, so, that visitor would be informed, that there is something more to be seen. We were also thinking of alternative loop serie, which would include surprising video material such as ladies in small bikinies, which would be available to the ones, who are brave enough, for example to whistle in the museum.

When a video ends, the installation enters idle mode, displaying just a loop of people on the beach.

Place

One of the long corridors (left side from the entrance to the museum).

Technical Implementation

The video playback and video sound is done with a Power Macintosh computer running MAX. The drums have piezoelectric tremor sensors.

Other beach soundscape is created with the main sound system.

What we need

A Power Macintosh with MAX
MAX software for playing the video and reading the sensors
Video projector
Edited video clips
Tremor sensors
Drum
Slide projector
Slides
Panoramic big print
Two big prints of beach boulevard
A lot of photoprints
Hammock
Palmtree
Sand
Table + tablegames
Racket and a ball