Exhibitions

HONEYcom is proud to be involved with many high profile shows around New Zealand.

Case Histories

Kiwi Dairy "Tanker Ride" at Dairyland, Hawera

The Tanker Ride is the brainchild of the brilliant Hawera local, Nigel Ogle.
The audience enters and see a complete Mitsubishi Milk Tanker inside the Dairyland exhibition area.

Moving to the rear, there is a entrance into the back of the Tanker and a screen where a image of "Darryl" lets you know when you can enter. Once inside, there is seating for about 15 people.

The show starts with the lights dimming, the curtains at the front open to reveal the back of Darryl's head. He's a Milk Tanker driver, and we have joined him as he leaves the Kiwi Dairy factory to make his rounds. And Darryl is animated - his head moves as speaks.

The unique feature of this exhibit is, that when Darryl starts the engine of his truck, the area in which the audience is seated starts to vibrate with the engine noise. Once Darryl starts driving, the vibrations change pitch and simulate the gear changes of a powerful vehicle.

On the way we see the Taranaki countryside, and enter a typical Taranaki Dairy Farm. The audience experiences a series of rapid jolts they cross the cattle bars.

All the pictures and sound are coming a computer playing a Quicktime movie at television resolution. But the Quicktime movie also features a custom data track that holds the commands for a Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC for short.
The PLC is switching on or off the various devices that create the vibrations and jolts, as well the lighting and Darryl's movements. The PLC is heart of the show and the computer is the brain.

This was a co-production with concept and design from Nigel Ogle, video written and directed by Hugh MacDonald, sound by Kit Rollings, PLC installation, programming by Greaves Electrical and editing, graphics, post production, programming and technical management by HONEYcom.

Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, "Golden Days", Wellington

Golden Days is an "object theatre". That is a exhibition in which objects or props on the set react in sympathy with the movie playing.

The theme of Golden Days is that the audience has entered the premises of Chas Toogood, a second hand dealer specialising in Kiwi Memorabilia. But it is closing time and the audience has been locked in overnight. As the shop darks the shop window becomes a window on the past and images start to form. The images are loosely grouped with themes of scenery, idyllic holidays, Kiwi inventors and sports personalities, war etc.

Like the Kiwi Tanker Ride, Golden Days is a Quicktime movie but with multiple custom data tracks. As well as controlling a PLC, the host computer also talks to a 24 channel lighting controller (including a Martin Roboscan), a MIDI sampler for random warning messages, another computer "front of house" that lets the audience know when to enter, detects emergency signalling and final logs all events to the internal Te Papa monitoring system.

Golden Days was produced by Steve Lahood and Associates. HONEYcom and associates developed, edited, programmed, sweated blood, complied, designed and did the technical and video production.