Experience Center – NCSM SCIENCE CITY KOLKATA
THE HUMAN EVOLUTION PANORAMA
The Science City, Kolkata is one of Kolkata’s most visited tourist attractions
Engaged in popularizing science among general public and students for the past 36 years, the Science City, Kolkata receives over a million footfalls every year.
The Science Exploration Hall with three galleries about the evolution of life on earth
The Science Exploration hall offers 5500 sq.m of floor space, including an exhibit on pre-human evolution, one on modern science and finally the digital human evolution panorama.
Stages of hall transformation
Stage 1
The empty hall which sounded like a whispering gallery, underwent massive acoustics treatment making it fit for functioning as a fully immersive exhibit.
Stage 2
A well built canopy, with precision mounting structures was erected to support the weight of eight Barco HDX W20 Flex projectors and the surround sound system.
Stage 3
The cylindrical structure was then optimised for projection mapping, using multiple coatings of Screen Goo paint. Now… the hall was ready for the exhibit
No.. That is not a spaceship. That… is an acoustic work of art
Over 1292 sq.m of ceiling, 157 sq.m of pillars and 228 sq.m of flooring was acoustically treated to reduce the reverberation time to the order of 1-1.5 seconds.
A 14 Million pixel space with 8 Barco HDX W20 Flex projectors
While content was streamed by the VizDisplay® media server, the 360 degree projection was created using an edge blending system with 8 Barco 3 chip DLP projectors.
The whole story of human evolution, illustrated in a single panoramic image
A single panoramic artwork stretching over 20m, illustrating just about everything from the onset of bipedialism to the future of mankind, was digitised and post processed optimsing it for projection.
Digitisation, stiching, post-processing and enhancement of a Gigapixel image
To capture the 20m long and 1.8m high panorama artwork, retaining its intricate detail, several thousand images were captured using a Canon EOS 7D Mark II mounted on a custom slider rig and stitched.
A 10 day shoot across South Africa and India stretching the limits of technology
To develop a dynamic show of over 14.7 Million pixels, with a running time of 20 minutes, an extensive shoot was organised using the RED EPIC DRAGON, equipped with a 6k sensor.
Bringing it all together in a way that has never been done before
To enhance immersion and reinforce key milestones, the projected panorama artwork is seamlessly integrated with ~89 perfectly positioned mannequins in the diorama.
Prepare for immersion like never before, with a 1220 sq.m canvas.
To put things in perspective, that’s bigger than the world’s largest IMAX screen at Darling Harbour, Sydney measuring over 1060 sq.m (35.7 m × 29.7 m). Beat that IMAX!
Having viewed the reconstructions of ape and human figures for the ‘Evolution of Man’ film, I can confirm that they
are as accurate as scientific knowledge will allow…
– Prof. Chris Stringer, Research Leader, Human Origins, Natural History Museum, UK
Accorded honor of Excellence in AV in the premium museum category
The Systems Integration Asia magazine in partnership with Infocomm India awarded the NCSM Human Panorama exhibit the highest honors for excellence in AV design & integration
