Controlling a Tornado
By: Adrienne Callahan, Exhibit Builder (Jun 01, 2000)
"Putting in the floor thumpers, the strobes, the compressed air, and the sub woofers is the fun part. People seldom understand that the real work in designing an exhibit comes in the months before when we are trying to define what the real agenda is, who the end user will be, and what the desired effect is that the show will provoke."
-A. Harold Plant, Jr., WaterMark Video, Inc.
The Menno-Hof Visitors Center is located in Shipshewana, IN, a town of 600. Annual attendance figures average 40, 000. How's that, you ask? Perhaps you don't know that for six months of the year up to 30,000 people pour into this town for a two-day flea market.
Exhibits in this Mennonite-Amish Visitors Center are highly interactive, employing effects such as DVD video, strobes, and low frequency effect speakers.
Work on the Menno-Hof was begun in 1972 when one of the Center's founders, Harvey Chupp, decided the local congregations needed a better way to answer the frequent questions about the history, life style and beliefs of the area's many resident Mennonite, Amish and related Hutterite congregations. The decision was made to build an interpretive center with enough pizzazz to draw visitors. The exhibit could then offer information regarding these three Christian denominations.
For openers, the founders decided a 16th century torture chamber and a simulated tornado might catch visitors' attention. They were right.
The "Tornado Room," which is one of six interactive exhibit areas, is located in what appears to be the inside of a rustic barn. Visitors in the "barn" look through a window at a video of a full-blown Midwestern tornado -- approaching fast. Sound begins to increase, air starts to stir, light dims. Soon the floor begins to shake, wind sweeps through the room, lightning flashes, and a roar of sound rumbles from all directions.
Having captured the visitor's attention, a brief video tells of the Mennonite emphasis on social service -- in particular their storm-related disaster relief work in this country and around the world. Several of the room's effects are again used while telling of the work done in the wake of a particularly devastating hurricane in the 1980's in Nicaragua.
Harold Plant of WaterMark Video, Inc., Palmyra, PA, has been involved wit the Tornado Room from its beginning, having worked on the original audio mix with Jim Bowman of Bowman and Company.Years later, as new media techniques became available and old control equipment became increasingly problematic, WaterMark helped design and install a new exhibit control system in February of 2000.
"We needed equipment that was close to foolproof, that we could depend on to be reliable and self-sustaining with no maintenance. A museum of this size does not want a great deal of technical involvement in maintenance," Plant pointed out. "Most media systems available today are more complex and technically sophisticated than the typical custodial staff is capable of handling. We wanted something that was straightforward and easy to use, but would accommodate the variety of effects we wanted in the exhibit."
Museum Technology Source's LT-12 Show Timer/Controller was chosen primarily on its successful track record in earlier exhibits WaterMark had designed and installed at other locations. Also, for much the same reason, the company's DVD-204 Four Button DVD Controller was chosen to control the Pioneer DVD-7200 Player used in the exhibit.
The LT-12 is basically a timing device which allows the user to program up to twelve lamps or relays independently. A CD player may also be connected to play simultaneously with the twelve outputs, permitting an easy approach to exhibits employing sound and lights or models.
In the Tornado Room exhibit, the LT-12 is used to turn on and off such effects as room light dimmers, a "show-in-progress" sign outside the entrance door, low-frequency effect speakers, compressed air, a red warning light, and floor vibrators. One of the twelve outputs is used to start the DVD controller that has the show's narration and storm visuals. With this approach, the LT-12 is able to maintain synch between flashes of lightning on the video and flashes of an exhibit strobe which is controlled by one of the other twelve outputs.
Comments of departing visitors suggest they will long remember their visit to the Menno-Hof Tornado Room. Happily, they also leave the town of Shipshewana knowing quite a lot about Mennonite, Amish and Hutterite values and beliefs.
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