Open to The Public!

Opening Night

German Ambassador Matthias Höpfner

Well, we opened on Tuesday and had a great time doing it. The turn out was excellent and we were so happy that so many friends, family, colleagues and museums represented. We drank some German beer and wine courtesy of the Diefenbunker, were pleased to listen to the interesting and kind words of German Ambassador Matthias Höpfner and Diefenbunker Director Alexandra Badzak, and even cleared our throats a little to thank all those who have helped us out over the past year and a half. Graham Iddon, photographer and fellow museum studies graduate documented the night nicely. Thanks to everyone who made it out to Carp for our opening!

Eric Espig - Exhibit: F

Grant Vogl - Exhibit:F

Alexandra Badzak, Director - Diefenbunker Museum
Dr. Dean Oliver, Director - Canadian War Museum, Research & Exhibits

Grant's father inspecting the first video interactive

Exhibit F on CBC Radio

Exhibit F was on CBC Ottawa Morning Radio at 8:15am on Monday, May 11th 2009. You can listen to some of the interview here:

CBC Ottawa Morning

Thanks for all the support and interest in our work.

The Exhibit Team:
Grant Vogl & Eric Espig

Exhibit F Hits the News!

Exhibit F hit the newspaper today with a little positive exposure. Erin Fitzgerald from the West Carleton Review interviewed the team a few weeks ago and the article was published in this week's issue of the local paper. Great to get some press! Thanks Erin!

it was also picked up by the Perth Courier

Original photo by Erin Fitzgerald.
For full article, click here.

Video Interactives III

While Eric was tied up with video editing, I started wiring up the first video interactive unit. I had to teach myself how to connect components, power LEDs, crimp wire and other new skills in order to make everything work...

First mock-up with scavenged wires, keypad and DV-66. While Eric worked on formatting the videos, I began learning how to wire LEDs to a power source, connecting TVs with periphery and other electronic experiments. Having never done anything like this, I welcomed the chance to try new things and work my way through a problem until it was solved.

Custom wiring job...Using scavenged wire, a few connectors, and some trial and error I wired up a power source for the LEDs using a variable voltage AC/DC Adapter at 1.5V. It resembles a bird's nest, but I made sure to colour code each switch with all of its 4 connectors. I also tried to tidy things up with some zip ties and electrical tape.

Once the LEDs, switches and video were all working, I began switching a few settings on the player to achieve the best result for the viewer.

Within the 'guts' of the DV-66, there are 6 dip switches which can be toggled on or off to control aspect ratio, repeat mode and more. Read your manuals!

Final mock-up of first video interactive. All switches, video and LEDs are working. This unit will be partially disassembled and installed in-situ.

-Grant

Opening Night

This is the e-mailable graphic we came up with for our invitation-only opening night. We are also happy to be hosting the German Ambassador to Canada, who will be speaking briefly as well. The invitation is made up of both sides of the 600 postcards we printed for distribution. 9 4x6 double sided colour postcards fit on 12x18 glossy cardstock perfectly for a cost of 0.20 cents a pop.

Installation Video v. 2.0

It feels very strange to watch 5 months boiled down to 50 seconds...

Cases - V

To clean up the acrylic by anywhere from: scraping off paint, to removing surface scratches to polishing it up to show-quality shine we used the following products and they all performed very well.
To remove dried paint from the acrylic we scraped off as much as we could with a blade then used Methyl Hydrate, which is also very effective at helping to remove adhesives. To smooth out surface scratches you can use Novus 1-2-3 and to add a finished polish as well as provide a protective anti-static film we used Spraywash Plastic Cleaner

Video Interactives - II

Construction of the first video interactive was started today. An existing pedestal was first lightly sanded, then, using a printed mock-up, the hole position was determined for button/switch placement.

Pedestal with post holes. The box is hollow underneath the button holes and will house the DV-66, controllers and wiring.

Using a Forstner bit, I cut matching holes into a piece of 1/8" acrylic to cover the final printed text/grapic panel.

Each switch came equipped with a locking notch, so each corresponding hole was also given a notch using a 1/4" drill bit, thus locking the buttons from turning and twisting the wires.

Acrylic sheet, complete with notched post holes.

Test fitting.

Mock-up of final pedestal. The buttons will have red LEDs and the final graphic panel with describe each video, have a run time and small thumbnail in English and French.

-Grant.

Lighting Installation - I

Lighting begins...

Lighting installation began today. We are using "fake" track lighting with 4 halogen bulbs. The lights came stock with 50W bulbs, but we will most likely be installing dimmers and new bulbs.

Once placement was determined, holes were sawed into the ceiling tile to fit the lighting boxes. After the lights were set up, it was much quicker & easy for the Electrician to wire them up.

Light boxes were installed using existing ceiling channels (a Diefenbunker speciality), welded bolts and collars and threaded rod cut to length.

View of threaded rod and lighting box from above the ceiling tiles.

Head in the ceiling! Be extremely careful when working in old structures. I wore a respirator, goggles and long sleeves to ensure that I didn't inhale or come into contact with any dust, insulation or asbestos.

Ceiling inserts using custom hardward and existing channels in the ceiling.

Lights up! Currently, the installation is complete but the lights are not aimed or balanced.

Sign Vinyl & Stencils - IV

Weeding out 180 feet of vinyl barb-wire. It was drawn with an illustrator brush (CS3), rasterized and then livetrace-d using "simple trace". We could safely fit 18' of barb-wire onto one 3' x 24" piece of sign-vinyl.

Ready to go - We found out that transfer tape can be used and re-used many, many, many times.

Applying the barb-wire border took approximately 4 person-hours.
***forgot to change the camera's white balance - we installed the halogen "track" lighting today! see tomorrow night's post for details!