Multimedia specialists, Scenomedia’s latest installation at Austria’s famous
Salzwelten salt mine experience includes the new Bronze Age Cinema located 400
metres below the Earth’s surface in natural Dachstein limestone bedrock of the
Hallstatt Mountain Salt Mines in Austria. Scenomedia installed AV Stumpfl show
control, multimedia and screens as core technology throughout.

The Bronze Age Cinema was created in a specially blasted 1,000-cubic-meter
cavern in the Rose Chamber of the experience. The 8-minute cinematic experience
ends to reveal Europe’s oldest wooden staircase, lovingly restored and documented
over a ten-year period by Vienna’s Natural History Museum. The Bronze Age
Cinema seats up to 70 visitors for each performance and at the end of the
presentation they can view prehistoric artefacts in custom made cases using LED
lighting.

Inside the cavern and in front of the ancient staircase, the AV Stumpfl Magnum
motorized projection screen measures 10 metres by three metres. This is used to
show a five-minute film documenting the painstaking staircase restoration process
and latest 3D scanning results.

AV Stumpfl FHD Players drive content to three Canon XEED WUX400ST short throw
projectors that are edge blended. The projectors are installed at a distance of 2.5-
metres in front of the Magnum motorized screen to eliminate projected light on to
the visitors.

In creating the content, Andreas Scheucher, Founder and Managing Director at
Scenomedia says: “Using RED EPIC Dragon cameras, we recorded footage in 6K
resolution (6,144 x 3,072 pixels).’

Video content is managed using the powerful AV Stumpfl Wings Vioso toolkit with its
simple to use timeline-based workflow.

Show control of DMX, Artnet, triggers and lighting and sound effects is achieved
using the AV Stumpfl modular Avio show control system.
All components of the control network are visually connected or “wired’ using the AV
Stumpfl new Avio Manager 2D interface. AV Stumpfl IOBox media control modules
store timeline and device control data on SD cards and operate independently. This
removes the need for any programming computers. “Our robust IOBox solid-state
hardware is able to withstand extreme conditions such as high humidity, salt and
temperatures that the mines present,’ adds Tobias Stumpfl.

Content is reproduced for each projector using frame-accurate AV Stumpfl solid-
state FHD Players.

Ensuring that wiring is kept to a minimum as well as guaranteeing power supply for
programming and control, the FHD Players and IOBox are powered by Power over
Ethernet (PoE). Scenomedia designed lighting and audio using a Bose sound system.

“The Bronze Age Cinema showcases over 7,000 years of the historical site and
welcomes over 420,000 guests who visit the salt mines each year. For this project,
we wanted to restore the 3,000 years-old Bronze Age stairs. We called upon
Scenomedia to integrate them into a cinematic experience as part of the regular
tour of the museum. Since opening in May 2015, it’s been a tremendous success
and the cinema is enjoyed by audiences of all ages,’ said Kurt Thomanek, General
Manager, Salinen Tourismus GmbH.