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MillimeterArt Imitates Life
May 1, 2008 11:00 AM, By Cynthia Wisehart
The news tells its own story at the Newseum.
The $450-million, 250,000-square-foot Newseum that opened in April houses an interactive gallery allowing visitors to record their own newscast and get a downloadable video of their performance.
The bald eagle needed a few minutes to practice; his handler asked for quiet from the gathering crowd. A crush of tourists, locals, and journalists had assembled for opening day of the Newseum — a $450-million addition to the iconic buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue. The eagle's gig was pretty simple: lift off from the glass-and-steel portico and head for the Capitol, the White House at his back. I guess the symbolism was the essential relationship between a free press and a democratic government; I caught myself thinking about the crazed eagle in The Colbert Report open. The crowd settled down, the rehearsal went smoothly, and — at the key moment — the confetti cannons went off with a mighty bang.
Incredibly, the eagle was the only thing that visibly malfunctioned that day — and really, he did OK. More significantly, the thousands of speakers, display devices, audio channels, video sources, and control components within the 250,000-square-foot building worked as designed. So did the broadcast equipment (the Newseum is both a museum and an enormous studio). Virtually the entire building and property is wired for broadcast and presentation; it's both a repository and a resource for the daily work of the news media. That's part of the Newseum aesthetic, but this multipurpose role also helps insure its financial future. Much is made, for example, that the main theater can seat a dual session of Congress — whether or not it ever will is beside the point. Already, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave their April 10 press conference from the Newseum's central studio, and ABC's George Stephanopoulos has committed to the east studio for a multi-year deal.
The 90ft.-long videowall portrays a streetscape of the Newseum in its new surroundings on Pennsylvania Avenue.
This well-conceived masterplan in part drove the AV design of the building and created the financial justification for an AV playground, born from the mind of Jim Updike, VP of technology for the Newseum's parent The Freedom Forum. A veteran NBC Worldwide news techie and someone who understands the necessary relationship between gear, content, and culture, he is a man whose dreams come true as intercom and RF systems — just ask him. The Newseum had an architect (Polshek and Partners) and a renowned museum designer (Ralph Appelbaum), but for my purposes, Updike is the man who matters.
It's hard to imagine how he had time for a multi-hour tour of the rack rooms, exhibits halls, and theaters on opening day — what with Sandra Day O'Connor due in the afternoon and a catered gala scheduled for the evening. Some 2,000 visitors were streaming through the halls as we slipped down back staircases and hallways, doors yielding to Updike's security card. Updike greeted everyone from Executive Director Joe Urschel (counting heads) to a bunch of remarkably relaxed AV techs in the lab. There was gear literally everywhere — there is AV on every one of the museum's seven levels — most of it wired neatly into rack after rack after rack in one of two central control rooms or mounted into soaring displays or master-control desks. But I couldn't help notice that a good scavenger could build a small installation just on spares and the odd leftover Wohler monitor.
Two HD broadcast studios, dubbed the Knight Studios, can send live programs by satellite and fiber-optic cable to any place on Earth.
In his role as head kid in the candy store, Updike unfolded a tale of signal processing that careens from portable AV carts to banks of Peavey Media Matrix Nions to Crestron control panels hot-wired with custom playlist software. (Euphonix gets a special affectionate mention as we pass one of its techs in the hall.) Thomson Grass Valley K2 switcher processing and Kalypso server — some for broadcast, some serving as interchangeable sources for the building's many theaters — share the racks with Doremi Nugget HDs and Adtec edjes for SD. Signals run over Opticomm fiber and CobraNet to 800 loudspeakers, an array of Christie HD and JVC projectors, Sony CRTs, Toshiba flatscreen monitors, Stewart screens, and a gorgeous 40'×22', 1920×1100-pixel Barco LED screen that presides over the acoustical triumph of the main lobby (SH Acoustics), visible from Pennsylvania Avenue through the great glass walls that front the building.
Updike delegated his vision to two main technology partners — Electrosonic for the AV, Communications Engineering (CEI) for the broadcast systems. There was some crossover — CEI built the systems for the Big Screen Theater news video-wall, for example. Because Updike and his right-hand guy Bud O'Conner were both engineers, the experience was really a partnership, says Dan Laspa, who ran the project for Electrosonic.
There are 14 exhibits and 15 theaters, and Updike tirelessly shows off all of them, as well as the two rack rooms, master control, the studios, and the postproduction facility. Here are just a few highlights:
