Documenting the spirit of Edinburgh at festival time, the Staged exhibition was made possible by the technical expertise of RemCam and the latest in video surveillance solutions from Vista.
Documenting the spirit of Edinburgh at festival time, the Staged exhibition was made possible by the technical expertise of RemCam and the latest in video surveillance solutions from Vista.
Commissioned through the Scottish Government's Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund and produced by the Collective Gallery, Staged took place during the Edinburgh Art Festival, and addressed the notion of Edinburgh as a giant stage, via a unique multichannel video installation.
To turn Staged into a reality, artists Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth enlisted RemCam to provide a tailored technical solution that would deliver their vision.
Projecting a mixture of live and pre-recorded footage on all four interior walls of Edinburgh's disused Calton Hill Observatory building, visitors observed a diverse array of images from all parts of the city. Colin McNaughton, Technical Manager at RemCam, explained, “We were approached with a difficult technical challenge, and just three weeks to design, test, and install a CCTV system that would deliver the type of images Kim and Jenny required.”
“To capture images from around Edinburgh, we were able to utilize a Vista demonstration kit,” McNaughton said. “Using a Vista VKBD4 Control Keyboard, Vista VPPH18WP/C PowerDome Pro fully-functional dome camera, and a small HD camcorder to digitally record footage from the camera's preset tours, Kim and Jenny captured a series of diverse scenes from around the city, for replay at the Observatory.”
In addition to their recorded footage, a Vista VPPH18WP/C PowerDome Pro fully functional dome camera mounted externally at the famous Camera Obscura Museum, adjacent to Edinburgh Castle, supplied live images to the installation via an encrypted wireless link.
“The CCTV images were fundamental to the installation, and their quality and reliability crucial,” said Mark Pritchard, Vista's divisional director. “The Vista PowerDome Pro cameras captured consistently high-quality images in a variety of difficult lighting conditions — from dimly lit city interiors, to panoramic landscapes of the Edinburgh sky line. Overall the installation was a great technical and artistic success.”