For centuries, food and eating has been steeped in tradition and culture, symbolising more than just the need to satisfy our hunger. Food doesn’t just unite us, but it tells stories of the regions or period it comes from, or of the person who handed down the recipe to a dish.
To explore and understand food stories in more detail, an exhibition entitled ‘The Feast’ is being held at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, an art and archaeological museum established in 1965. It is recognised as Israel’s largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world’s leading encyclopaedic museums. The Feast opened on 12, May 2023 and runs until 31, January 2024. Approximately 400,000 visitors are expected to experience this fascinating exploration of banquets, feasts, and food from the Ancient Near East in the 4th-1st millennium BCE. The exhibition provides the perfect opportunity to explore food’s role as a back drop to the discussion of ideologies, as well as a symbol of political and social status.
Food for thought
Visitors to The Feast will learn more about how festive events have been utilised by religious and royal institutions as a platform to establish and reaffirm their political power, while reinforcing prevailing ideology. Often overlooked yet essential elements of a feast – from the sending of invitations to funding the event, the presentation of gifts and aspects of inclusion and exclusion – are detailed in this exhibition. Helping to bring the experience to life, are carefully selected archaeological artefacts, iconographic representations, organic materials, and textual evidence from the Land of Israel and neighbouring cultures, many of which are from the Israel Museum’s own rich holdings.
Success on the menu with Vivitek
As with many major exhibitions exploring different and intriguing themes, AV and IT solutions are central to creating an immersive and memorable experience for visitors. In the case of The Feast, the museum’s answer to its AV requirements are six Vivitek DU4371Z projectors, which are ideally suited to galleries and museum applications – like the Israel Museum – as well as for corporate, education environments. A short-throw projector, the DU4371Z-ST creates quite an impression thanks to its easy and discrete positioning options which can be very close to the projected surface. This versatile WUXGA laser projector offers an impressive picture with brightness of 5100 lumens. Along with 0.5 short throw lens, 360-degree positioning option and optimal thermal management, the projector allows for a picture-perfect installation both in single set up as well as mapping applications. Menachem Amin, Director of the Audiovisual Department at The Israel Museum, explains why the DU4371Z was the best choice for the museum: “We were looking for projectors with a wide lens that would fit within the exhibition’s budget. Since there was a need for projection along a wall that was over 20 metres long, but the width of the corridor from the opposite wall less than five metres, we couldn’t use projectors with a standard lens.” This presented the museum with a challenge, as he explained: “Projectors with interchangeable lenses are large and their presence is noticeable, so they were disqualified for placement in this narrow corridor. The solution we choose after testing some alternatives was the Vivitek DU4371Z, which has 0.5 lens and gave us perfect quality and value for money for this project.”
Ingredients that impress
While the stunning images displayed don’t take advantage of the projectors’ edge blending capabilities, they do take advantage of projection mapping, whereby the artist who created the animation completes the finishing at the gallery, in front of the projectors. Supporting the Vivitek projectors to help create an immersive experience are special speakers suited to performing in public spaces, mounted on the projectors to create live sound effects. Small and narrow angled, the loudspeakers can only be heard only under the projector and not throughout the space, thus preventing unwanted sound-spill.
The DU4371Z’s flexible mounting options were well-suited to the unique layout of the museum. The projectors are positioned on a rail from the ceiling, which was installed to accommodate the attachment of projectors for this exhibition, as well as future ones.
With the projectors in use for approximately seven hours a day – rising to 12 hours a day for some events – Vivitek’s famed reliability and highly efficient cooling ensures consistent uptime and an optimal experience for all visitors to The Feast. Maintaining and operating the exhibition’s AV stack are members of the museum’s audio video department and they are very satisfied with the results, the projectors’ ease of use and reliability. Not for the first time, Vivitek has helped to cook up an unforgettable experience, leaving visitors to The Feast with an appetite for more.