ARCHIVE PROJECTION MAPPING

Scottish Maritime Museum’s Illumination: Harbour Festival of Light 2017

This is what Double Take Projections love – historic archives and storytelling. We illuminated the Scottish Maritime Museum, situated on Irvine’s sleepy, historic waterfront to celebrate the start of a four-night art and light spectacular.

HOW WE DID IT

Archives and Storytelling

Client – Scottish Maritime Museum
Location – Linthouse Building, Irvine
Date – November 2017
Project Partners – Event Scotland, Scottish Maritime Museum, Museum Galleries Scotland, North Ayrshire Council, Black Light
Projector Spec – 2 x EX16K-E 16,000-lumen projectors

The commission allowed us to delve into the Maritime Archives and produce artwork from rarely seen shipbuilding images. This projection mapping art piece was to be the focal point of a wider show which included aerial acrobatics, street performers and light sculptures.

The Scottish Maritime Museum is housed within the vast Victorian, glass-roofed Linthouse. The building chosen was an A-listed ‘Cathedral of Engineering’; formerly the engine shop of Alexander Stephen and Sons Shipyard in Glasgow, before being salvaged and painstakingly rebuilt in Irvine.

The archive curators provided us with maps, engineering blueprints and black and white images that were collated by a host of volunteer archivists. This creative commission was seen as a great opportunity to reward those who had given hours of their personal time by showcasing the images they had rescued.

Cathedral of Engineering

The museum’s photographic collection was a joy to explore and animate. We were able to find incredible stories including the launch of a destroyer by Queen Elizabeth, peacetime vacations ‘doon the watter’ and images of colossal shipyards that entire communities serviced. It was an education to learn about an industry greatly diminished, long before many of us in the team were born.
Our team composited hundreds of images and maps in After Effects to create a new stylized canvas that looked like a draftsman’s drawing board. The final result was a stunning collage of animated historic images. Having conducted a Photoscan survey of the facade we were able to plot the images around the contours of the windows and massive doors.
To cover the full facade, we used a 2-projector setup with a 50px blend down the middle. The custom creative was played back through Madmapper which gave us the control to subdivide the projected image to fit the building.

“Double Take Projections worked with us on the creation of a bespoke shipbuilding-inspired projection for the Scottish Maritime Museum’s Illumination: Harbour Festival of Light. From the first enquiry through to the final delivery Double Take Projections were fantastic- easy to work with, approachable and great at bringing their own creative twist to the overall result. Their work brought our Museum’s photographic collection to life, allowing many visitors to enjoy, engage and reminisce with our objects in a new creative way.”
Fiona Greer, Curator, Scottish Maritime Museum.

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