In late February, during their 10th delivery of the annual Enlighten Festival in Canberra, The Electric Canvas was approached by the National Capital Authority who expressed an interest in developing architectural projections for the National Carillon in Canberra to celebrate its 50th Anniversary and to herald the recommissioning of the Carillon after the casting and installation of additional bells for the instrument.
The Carillon sits on a small island in Lake Burley Griffin, connected to the northern foreshore by a pedestrian bridge. The 50m high musical instrument was a gift from England to Australia and officially opened by the Queen in 1970. The Electric Canvas had the opportunity during Enlighten to survey the structure and to create a wireframe model allowing them to plan a projection layout for this possible activation. Not long after this survey, the world went crazy and they were plunged into lock-down and, like many others, all foreseeable future projects were cancelled or postponed.
The Electric Canvas continued to work with the NCA to explore other possible activations and several opportunities were discussed including a Covid-19 solidarity piece and an ANZAC Day piece. For a time, it looked like these projects would go ahead so they drove to Canberra to complete their surveys so that creative design templates could be completed. Unfortunately, only three days before bump-in, these projects were also cancelled. Naturally all involved were disappointed but to their surprise and delight another opportunity presented in support of Reconciliation Week.
The plan was to project onto the Carillon over eight nights with each night dedicated to a different Indigenous organisation or in observation of key dates within Reconciliation week. In a little over two weeks, The Electric Canvas’ creative department engaged with eight separate organisations, as well as Indigenous Artists, in order to develop their pieces for projection. Their experience with working with Indigenous and culturally-sensitive content was beneficial in navigating what could be a difficult process; especially in an extremely condensed time frame. The design process was complicated by the need to consider various viewing angles and distances that varied from 100m to over 850m. Key messaging had to consider all the possible vantage points. The NCA had taken a decision to open the island to limited numbers of people so they also had to allow for very close proximity viewing. Unfortunately, a few days prior to launch a decision was made not to open the island to the public.
Setup on the island was completed in a day and involved placement of four projection towers and a total of twelve high-powered laser-phosphor projectors with signal delivered from The Electric Canvas’ Modulo Player™ media servers. Because the project was really eight separate one-night shows, they provided a full hot-backup server system. After an additional night of projector alignment, they conducted a content review for stakeholders which also provided an opportunity for drone footage to be captured for use on social media by the NCA. As there is no shelter on the island, which makes it an unpleasant place to work in cold and windy conditions, they set up their site office in the comfort of the viewing gallery atop the Carillon nearly 50m above ground. From there, the operator could monitor the entire 360-degree projection from cameras mounted in each of the projection towers.
All stakeholders were extremely happy and impressed with the brightness and clarity of the projections. It was a great exercise for the team at The Electric Canvas as they finally broke the bonds of their recent confinement and got the chance to do what they love best.
