British music gets a techie experience

The British Music Experience doesn't just highlight the country's tune talent, but its tech skills, too.

By Jennifer Scott, 21 Apr 2009 at 17:40

The design cleverly gives you an allotted slot to play in and, depending on the numbers of visitors at that time, will not let you on again for a set period, ensuring a smooth flow of customers and, of course, letting everyone have a go.

The second is the dance booth which uses holograms to teach you routines from through the ages, from the twist to rave dancing. Once you have suitably embarrassed yourself there is an area outside the booth where you can watch your hologram self back.

The extra bonus though is, good or bad, you can rewatch the video of the dance routine via the MyBME website or listen to a stream of you playing along in the Gibson Room. The dance video even has the capability to be shared via your choice of social networking sites.

Paul Lilley, the curator of the BME, said: “The interactivity of the BME helps us to present stories in different ways and help people learn about music. British people are awful at celebrating themselves and this exhibition allows them to do that in a non-linear technological way.”

Real tech, right now

The technology itself is very simple off the shelf products. The readers come from a Dutch company who provide 50 per cent of serial to Ethernet converters in the market and are linked to full tolerance servers.

The obvious issue would be storage as your MyBME information is available for life. At the O2 there are two main data centres that initially store the data but via a batch process it pushes it out to the MyBME servers. Doing this in batches maximises the bandwidth, allowing your content journey to be available within three hours.

Many members of other museums have been to see the exhibition and Lilley believes it will not be long until we see this technology everywhere.

“We are the new kids on the block in museums. Other places look dated but our experience shows what the future holds. Others are likely to follow suit.”

The BME experience is topped off by a final “concert”, a darkened room coated in large screens playing some of the most classic live performances in popular music history from Led Zepplin’s “Whole lotta Love” to Robbie Williams’ “Let me entertain you” at Knebworth. This last explosion of sound, colour and tech leaves you with the hair on the back of your neck standing up and the feeling of a good rock and roll experience with that added touch of tech joy.