Our House

Our House is the world’s first electronic music experience. By day, Our House offers visitors a multi-sensory journey through electronic music and club subculture. Three nights a week, the same site welcomes clubbers as Club AIR.

The museum is a great audiovisual spectacle. The spaces are used for various purposes: a museum, a museum shop, and a club. As the main audiovisual partner, First Impression worked together with Our House on the complete experience within these three components.

The uniqueness of this project lies in the dual environment: in the daytime, there is the museum and afterwards, it is quickly converted into Club AIR. This is possible because all museum pieces and parts can be disconnected in no time and can be stored in small, hidden spaces.

Many of the museum exhibits are complex multimedia installations and First Impression had its work cut out to have very complex systems up and running with simple, quick and failsafe operation, that can be operated by the non-technical crew. The other conquered challenge was to work in an existing and partially monumental building, which means that there are all kinds of limitations when realising a new infrastructure.

Our House is provided with a venue-wide JBL audio system. Two Bose ControlSpace Ex-1280 DSP provide additional audio processing.

A partnership was formed with HARMAN for the audio solutions throughout the venue, with JBL speakers used in every space – including Air 1, the main central area of the museum and nightclub, which is also used for the introduction and ending of the Our House museum experience. In here, there are 16 VTX A8 loudspeakers, six VTX subs, four VRX subs and four AC 18/26 set up, all mixed by a Soundcraft VI1000 console. JBL is a big global brand but not that well known in clubs in the Netherlands. It has the best showroom in the Netherlands to showcase its stuff. Our House also uses its headphones in the exhibitions, and they are for sale in the museum shop, which makes it a 360° deal.

All in all, the project’s audio solutions were composed of 16 JBL VTX A8 loudspeakers, six JBL VTX subs, four JBL VRX subs, four JBL AC 18/26, one Soundcraft VI1000 consoles, two Bose ControlSpace Ex-1280 DSP, 64 Powersoft Mover transducers, and four Powersoft Quattrocanali 4804 DSP+D amplifiers.

The lighting setup includes 12 CLF strobe bars, 44 CLF Poseidon Wash XS moving heads mounted on moveable trusses, and 150m of moving LED strips.
While Air 1 is the main focal point where Our House begins and ends, throughout the venue there are countless interactive elements which form the exhibitions, in addition to LED signage and a venue-wide JBL audio system. Two Bose ControlSpace Ex-1280 DSP provide additional audio processing while Resolume software controls all dynamic LED lines, and Scala controls numerous displays and LED walls throughout the museum.

Altogether, the lighting system behind Our House includes: 12 CLF strobe bars
44 CLF Poseidon Wash XS moving heads, GrandMA console, 30 OneEightyOne LED lines, and Resolume software for LED line control.

The visitor is immediately immersed in a visually overwhelming entrance with LED welcome displays, floor, and wall projections. At the entrance, visitors can see the wall projection with ’24 hour party people’ showing clubbers from all over the world and from different time periods. The actual experience starts when all visitors – who buy tickets for a fixed timeslot of 75 minutes – gather at the dancefloor, which is the central area of the nightclub. This is when the 15-minute opening show starts.

Retractable projection screens can be lowered on three sides of the dancefloor and, combined with eight 15k lumen Epson projectors, deliver 270° of projected content. Another two Epson projectors (20k lumens each) fire onto the dancefloor. The projection is supported with further lighting and effects that combine six lasers, moving headlights mounted on moving trusses, 12 CLF Lighting strobes, 150m of LED light strips and MagicFX CO2 Jets.

The equipment installed to provide this effect, includes: eight Epson eb-L1755u projectors, two Epson EB-L2000u projectors, and Dataton Watchpax 60 SDI media servers using Watchout software.

Working in an existing and partially listed building means that there are all kinds of limitations when realising a new infrastructure. Initial hopes to use much of the fabric and some of the AV systems in the existing nightclub were quickly dashed. When First Impression got on site, it realised quickly it wasn’t able to repurpose any of the technology.

It got worse when it also discovered the ceiling had to be completely replaced as it wasn’t strong enough to support the rigging and equipment it wanted to suspend from it. A full overhaul of the space commenced and the installation could finally take place.

In the final show, called The Culture Ride, Our House creators throw an overwhelming experience at the visitor. A full sound and light show features classic dance music tracks spanning nearly 50 years and multiple genres. LED surrounding the edges of the walls is synchronised with projection on four surfaces, lasers and lighting.

It’s here the visitors also experience the surprise of the vibrating and ‘falling’ dance floor for the first time. This hydraulic floor vibrates in tandem with the music and visuals thanks to 64 Powersoft Mover transducers, and at one specific point, there is a sudden drop of 10cm. It’s a ‘double floor’ concept and was designed and installed by Lagotronics Philippines. It is 7m by 8m, 36cm in height and can lift a maximum of 120 people and its own weight.

The top layer, which is separate and sits on top of the hydraulic floor, has the Mover transducers and can rise 10cm during the show before a sudden drop. There are four powerful hydraulic cylinders and a compact lifting system with bronze bushings for maximum lifespan. It is an important part of the show but it’s entirely designed and produced by Lagotronics and not First Impression.

Interaction is key for the entire museum experience. These are the most important interactive elements First Impression has implemented in the museum:
In the History Masterclass near the main dancefloor, visitors can find a Samsung 2.5mm LED wall. Seamlessly integrated into the centre of the wall is an 85-inch Samsung display that appears to float in portrait orientation. This is where some of the biggest DJs talk about the history of dance music.

A large Displax touch table invites visitors to scroll through decades to see rave flyers from the period. Dragging a flyer onto a central “turntable” will play music from the event. Two displays form the touch table but the interactive surface had to be seamless, so First Impression installed a single IR overlay over both units.

Another exhibit looks at dance music around the world with a Pufferfish interactive globe central to the installation. Other visuals in the same area are delivered with Epson projection on one of the walls, and a five-by-one display wall from Samsung.
Interactivity continues with a dance music quiz served through headphones and three Samsung displays paired with Aopen players.

Visitors to Our House are also encouraged to explore approaches to making electronic music and a small variant of the Redbull sequencer allows visitors to compose their own tracks they can listen to through headphones.

For those more into listening, a crate-digging experience offers that chance to look through boxes of ‘records’. If the record is placed in a slot, it plays out through JBL headphones, while information on the track is provided, realised by using RFID technology.

Visitors can also go through a DJ tutorial. Four setups are available where instruction is provided via a Samsung screen to play and mix tracks.

In the final show, called The Culture Ride, Our House creators throw an overwhelming experience at the visitor. A full sound and light show features classic dance music tracks spanning nearly 50 years and multiple genres. LED surrounding the edges of the walls is synchronised with projection on four surfaces, lasers, and lighting.

One of the biggest challenges in this project was dealing with an extreme amount of technology and a wide variety of disciplines, such as lighting, audio, lifting, hoisting, content management, and show control.

In the dance scene, this is all used intensively. But in most situations, organisations have a full control crew at their disposal. This is not the case at Our House, so this challenge was presented to First Impression, who master this technique. But working in an existing and partially listed building means that there are all kinds of limitations when realising a new infrastructure.

In all technical areas there is a control panel which can be used to start separate parts of the show. Without making concessions to the initial idea, First Impression succeeded in making all systems fully work together. Literally, everything is connected with each other. This also concerns communication with the moving elements, such as the roof, floor, and projection displays. Everything has been concealed invisibly and everything can be controlled from a central control system for both the museum and the club, in terms of light, sound, and visuals as well as the moving elements.

Many of the exhibits are complex multimedia installations and First Impression had its work cut out to have very complex systems up and running with simple, quick and failsafe operation. Extron PCP Pro 360Qxi control processors were installed throughout the site and First Impression programmers wrote more than 10,000 lines of custom code for the project. This represents 1,000 hours of programming time. Control is accessed via Extron TLP Pro 1025T touch panels.

Speaking about the project, Alan Luring, Manager and Founding partner of Our House, said: “In the journey to the electronic dance music museum experience, we came up with the craziest ideas. Ideas of which we thought was impossible to realise. What surprised us, was the ‘never say no’-mentality of First Impression. Each request was taken into consideration, and it was either capable of realising it or it came up with an alternative that we hadn’t thought of and blew our socks off. It truly is a dedicated partner.”