AV Installation at the Tower of London

The Requirement

Following two successful installations at Hampton Court Palace in 2018, Adlib recently completed an audio visual installation for Historic Royal Palaces entitled “Prisoners at the Tower of London”.

The installation was carried out in two areas of The Tower: The Bloody Tower and Beauchamp Tower, during planned closure periods throughout the summer. While all hardware was provided, installed and configured by Adlib, the content it played came from Audio Consultant, David Sheppard (Sound Intermedia) and Video Consultants Northover & Brown.

Northover & Brown hand animated the video content frame by frame with the black and white content providing a completely borderless look.

The Solution

The Bloody Tower

The exhibition in The Bloody Tower tells the story of the imprisonment of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Boy Princes.

The first part of this AV installation employs two Apart Ovo3 loudspeakers and an Apart Sublime subwoofer fixed to the Tower’s portcullis with non-marking flexible fixings to reproduce a scene-setting soundscape.

Downstairs, in what was once Raleigh’s study, a Dataton WATCHOUT media service provides playback for 3 projection mapped screen areas across the walls and a specially-made table, in perfect sync with 5 channels of audio creating an immersive soundscape to accompany the narrative.

Apart Vinci5 loudspeakers were chosen for this installation to meet the dual requirements of compact size and extended frequency response.

Upstairs, another 4 channels of audio and a single projector are fed by a bespoke Adlib multi-channel media player, telling the story of the Boy Princes.

The exhibition entitled “Other Prisoners” is installed in The Beauchamp Tower.

Downstairs, a timber-framed structure was built inside the space with information presented on all four sides. 4 x Ovo3 loudspeakers were installed on the overhanging shelf and two Sublimes were installed discretely on the inside of the structure to meet the client’s exacting standards that no AV equipment should be visible. The system was powered by Lab Gruppen Lucia installation amplifiers and processed with their built-in DSP.

Upstairs, a single Apart Ovo5P speaker connected to an Adlib media player provided the soundscape.

The Result

Tim Robinson, Adlib’s Design Engineer in charge of the project, said “The fact that the Tower of London project was itself a referral from another branch of Historic Royal Palaces [Hampton Court Palace], where we had previously completed two installations, is testament to the great working relationship that we have forged with the Interpretation Managers at HRP.”

He continued “Working in such important historic buildings is an honour and a great responsibility, however that usually means it is anything but straightforward. It’s finding solutions to challenges such as these that make the projects so special”.

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