Powersoft’s Mover transducer is at the heart of a new four-dimensional nightlife experience in Amsterdam, where visitors dive the history of electronic dance music from roots to the present.
Located in Amsterdam’s Rembrandt district, Our House has been part of the electronic music scene since the 1980s, and recently became a digital storytelling museum, offering a 75-minute journey into the genre via interactive exhibits, shows and performances. ‘When we came here about two years ago, the place was very analogue,’ recalls General Manager, Jeroen Jansen. ‘There was a sound system, strobes, smoke machine and some LEDS – that was about it.
‘We wanted to rebuild the club with installations that could tell the story of over 40 years of dance music by using mixed technology. In order to revamp the venue and bring it to a completely new level, we received a lot of support from within the industry, including Powersoft.’
The venue’s overhaul had to be carefully considered, as it remains home to the Club Air nightclub in the evening. The power of the amplifiers and Mover are used to connect to the video content during the day, with lower frequencies ramped up on the dancefloor to accentuate the music for the club.
Jansen sought advice from Powersoft engineers to assess the number of required Movers to support the dancefloor structure they had in mind; double layered flooring that needed to support 100 people and 12 tonnes of weight. They opted for 64 Movers, Powersoft’s compact linear transducer, powered by four Quattrocanli 4804 DSP+D amplifiers. The transducer can be attached to a large number of objects and structures including gaming chairs, entertainment venue seats, wall panels and, in this case, underneath the double layered dancefloor.
‘We came up with the idea of actively involving all technical elements that are associated with electronic music, like light, video, laser and special effects,’ says Jansen, who refers to the specifically designed content as ‘connector of all the dots’. ‘We wanted movement from underneath people’s feet, like when the beat drops or there’s a musical crescendo, to form a completely immersive experience.’
The ‘double floor’ construction uses one hydraulic surface that can slide up and down 20cm, and secondary flooring on top. The latter has the 64 Movers attached, one to each panel, so it can be felt wherever a person is standing.
Jansen attributes his passion for electronic music as the driving force in creating this experiential museum, which plays homage to ‘protagonists’ (iconic DJs, bands and producers, including the likes of Daft Punk, Carl Cox and Diplo) who helped curate a first-of-its-kind experience: ‘It was very important to us that we created a full VR experience, without glasses, at the climactic end of the visitors’ journey. That’s where the idea of a haptic experience came up: to tie in all the technology with movement, so that everything worked in harmony.’
System integrator Lagotronics worked with Our House to develop the ‘free fall’ hydraulic floor system, which not only vibrates but drops downwards. ‘We add a special element that nobody expects, so it’s quite a shock to people when they are here; it creates a really unique experience,’ Jansen says.
The creative designer behind the audio system, Joshua Dutrieux (JDX Music), was approached by Jansen and Fourmation, his entertainment company, with the brief to create something that had never been done before and what would make the dance museum truly memorable: ‘I know Jansen from back in the days when we organised dance music events together,’ says Dutrieux. ‘I come from a background of house music and hardcore, so I was very keen to be a part of this project’
Dutrieux experimented with two Mover units at his home, exploring the capabilities of its low-end frequencies: ‘I wanted to pinpoint frequencies to get the floor rumbling. I had all these audio samples and started tweaking the volumes up and down. Eventually the rumble made my jaw shake, and I thought, ‘Okay, let’s do this full scale on a dancefloor’.’
Reliability and durability have drawn system integrators to work with Mover and its various applications for a wide range of installs since its debut. Competitive products have an average four-year lifecycle, whereas Mover has been tested rigorously in Powersoft’s laboratories to prove the lifecycle lasts closer to a decade.
Over the past few years, Mover has been used for a wide variety of applications, in gaming chairs, immersive experiences and under floors, where it is used as a sub-harmonic frequency extension to replace the amount of subwoofer in a space, subsequently reducing low-frequency noise pollution to the surrounding environment.
‘Because of the massive force we can put on a Mover, it actually replaces four of the conventional products that have been used in the past, meaning that the product is very efficient,’ explains Mark Kocks, Business Development Manager at Powersoft. ‘The sensations created are unprecedented – all the visitors I’ve seen here at Our House were walking away with having experienced something new.’
Local DJs, promoters and event organisers invited to enjoy the Our House exhibit have fed back to the team behind the project that its broadened their sense of how music can be played, and how lower end frequencies can be introduced with Mover. ‘We’re hearing from people within the industry that they are now experimenting more because of our system,’ says Jansen. ‘The haptic system that Powersoft’s Mover has delivered to this install is something people have never experienced before.’
More: www.powersoft.com
