CQ opens the conversations at the District 6 Museum

The District 6 Museum first opened on Buitenkant Street in Cape Town on the 10^th of December 1994, to present a window into the past and to tell the incredible, and tragic history of the Bo Kaap area. The museums current exhibition “Digging Deeper” is an intention to enquire beyond the surface, into the pasts of South African society and the workings of memory using both multimedia and interdisciplinary skills, combining the immediacy of hand-mixed colour and hand-generated processes, with documentary, digital and sound elements.

The voices of narrators and transcriptions of the life histories of former residents are a major resource for the choice of exhibition themes. With these concepts in mind, the Chief Curator of Exhibitions Design and Production for the Iziko Museums of South Africa, Amy Sephton met with the Audiosure team and product specialist Andre Burger to design a solution for this concept exhibit. The idea revolves around six empty chairs facing each other in a central part of the museum with a prepared dialog happening between the chairs to convey the language, sense of the times and to guide visitors in some engaging topics relating to the history, people and culture of the Bo Kaap and District 6. In the ceiling above each chair is a speaker sharing the roof space with an Allen & Heath CQ-18T Digital Mixer. Six tracks of conversations were recorded onto a Multitrack Audio File loaded into the SD Card slot on the mixer. Each track of the prepared multitrack mix runs to one of six separate outputs on the CQ-18T which in turn plays out from the speaker connected to that output. The effect is like being on the fringes of the table listening to people conversing, and by closing your eyes you can imagine those people still there, right in front of you, sharing their experiences in conversations from the past. It is a powerful tool in the museum experience that taps right into one of the core human experiences of storytelling using technology to facilitate learning right from the mouths of people who lived in area themselves.

The CQ range of mixers are a phenomenal addition to the digital mixer lineup from Allen & Heath. CQ’s offer the same 96 kHz FPGA processing platform as their bigger siblings the QU, SQ, Avantis, and dLive ranges but simplifies it down into an ultra-compact hardware box controlled by a bright 7” multi-touch screen. The extensive User Interface on the Touch screen is augmented further with a large infinite scroll rotary, 3 color coded smaller rotary’s and 3 custom SoftKeys to coordinate the 18 inputs (16 x mono, 1 x stereo) and 8 outputs. Powerful DSP tools are already built-in so features like Auto Mic Mixing, Gain Assistant and Feedback Assistant let you optimize your mix with ease, while a four-slot compact FX suite is also just a tap away. The structure of the menus is in line with the larger surfaces from Allen & Heath so even at the entry point to the digital mixer range you still have access to advanced mixing tools such as DCA’s and Mute Groups. The CQ range all accept Bluetooth Audio, can play stereo audio from USB or SD cards, and can multitrack record direct to USB or SD card. For remote work the CQ’s can all be controlled by the CQ MixPad app so engineers and users can roam the audience area to tweak or head to stage while still being in full control of the mixer. This app is a vital part of the use at the museum as the mixer is installed into a space in the ceiling. With the built in Wi-Fi on the CQ-18T the device creates its own network allowing the curator to manage the audio and volumes all directly from the app.

This incredible solution is testament to what happens when strong relationships and communication are fostered and paired with innovative skills and resources. This incredible exhibition calls to us from the past using future technology to bring people together to learn and move forward as a nation. Audiosure have both the skills and resources to help build solutions that fits your ideas, space and budget. Call us today and let us move your world forward, together.