The web of North Holland, Floriade 2002
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Floriade takes place in the Netherlands just once every 10 years.
The province North Holland was represented by the "Web of North Holland", a much talked-about building designed by architect Cas Oosterhuis.
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The pavillion is shaped like a futuristic boulder with a lighted web on the outside.
It atracks attention day and night during the Floriade
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In January 2002 Soundpalette was contacted by 'Moodfactory', a business in Amsterdam responsable for the
completion of the pavillion.
The plans then in their final stages.
Up to 200 visitors at a time enter an interactive
audiovisual world. Landscape animation, both realistc and abstract, are projected in a 360 degrees panorama.
Triggered by rays of light, computer-controlled 'icons'
fly around in these landscapes. These also lead into video clips .....
anything is possible.
The aim is to highlight five aspects of life in the province – art, culture, industry, recreation and the environment – in as lively and original form as possible, in a presentation lasting 12 minutes.
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Instead of passively sitting back and watching films, Moodfactory offers the visitor the chance to take part in something very special.
It took an extensive brainstorming session, and we really had to stretch ourselves for this project. Luckily we managed to win through!! |
Wiebe was the one chiefly responsible for the Web of North Holland, though Han and Danny also made important contributions in the later stages.
"First I made the audio timeline for the entire show for the programmers from Green Dino. Then there was a month and a half left to finish the project. We decided to have surround sound, to fit in with the panoramic picture." |
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We searched through our archives for suitable music, composed new pieces and experimented with the sound design.Ideas came and went, problems cropped up and were solved. It was full speed ahead in our cooperative efforts with Moodfactory. We had to make it possible for several video fragments, triggered by the visitors, to run simultaneously with sound… On top of all this, the main programme with its own soundtrack had to be able to continue running. To this end, we had to sacrifice the icon sounds: four days’ work down the drain…
The building of the pavilion also raised interesting challenges, the most memorable being working for days at a time without electricity. In the end, after seven weeks of hard work, the soundtrack is ready.
Now the project is history, Floriade is past tense.
The pavilion was visited by many people and opinions were very divided. Older visitors in particular found it less appealing. The younger visitors, on the other hand, were full of praise for it.
For us this project was an exotic adventure outside the familiar world of films and leaders, and we learnt a great deal from it. Artistically it was also a very challenging experience.
In short, this was a pleasure to work on (especially nights, weekends and in stints of more than 14 hours at a time).
