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If it’s half as entertaining as the other Dome in downtown Halifax, it should prove well worth the eight-dollar admission.
Splash, Atlantic Canada’s first immersive cinematic dome, will be opening in mid-September on the Halifax waterfront with a documentary about the Bluenose II.
The 15-minute film will be projected onto the dome’s 360-degree screen as a “4D experience,” that will include surround sound, wind and “water effects.”
“Surround sound headsets coupled with synchronized wind and water effects will allow participants to go inside, above and beyond the Bluenose,” reads a press release announcing the project from producer Brookes Diamond.
The 50-foot geodesic cinema dome was built by tested in a prototype by researchers at NSCAD University. It’ll plonk itself onto Sackville Landing, right next to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, for September and October.
It’s not winter-proof, says spokesperson Julie Darnbrough, so the structure will have to come down for the winter with hopes to have it back on the waterfront next June (and every summer after that) with new films to screen.
Darnbrough writes via email that the Bluenose video project has been in the works since last December, but a “dome experience on the waterfront has been brewing for about four years.”
The approximate cost of said dome experience will be $550,000. It’s a presentation of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, with funding from the province and private contributions by Irving Shipbuilding, Clearwater Seafoods and “some smaller donors.”
“The government of Nova Scotia is proud to support such an innovative exhibit for people to enjoy on the Halifax waterfront,” writes Communities, Culture and Heritage minister Tony Ince in a release. “The 4D experience will open a window into the iconic vessel’s past, giving Nova Scotians a unique perspective of what life was like on the Bluenose.”
The recent restoration of Nova Scotia’s flagship Bluenose has gone millions of dollars over budget in what the province’s auditor general called a “baffling” and disappointing government failure.
No word if that bit of history will make the cut for the 15-minute shows, which will run every 40 minutes from 11am to 9pm, seven days a week. Visit splashdome.ca for tickets.
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This article appears in Back to School.
Back in 1964, IBM introduced a similar idea at the New York World’s Fair.
They created an egg shaped dome where you could sit in your seats, and see and feel like it was to ride in a train without any walls around you, over or under you. You could look down and see yourself hurtling down the rails while getting a 360 degree view of the outside all around you including behind you and above. Alas, no wind or rain. But I enjoyed it back then.
Cool but why the Bluenose an over budget rebuild engineering failure a shell of the Bluenose II a 10mill rebuild is costing tax payer over 25mill.
How nice – ‘private contributions’ from the likes of Irving and Clearwater. Perhaps taken from some of our money that has been given to these ‘poor’ companies over the years via various government grants, loans, subsidies etc.? There go the warm and fuzzy feelings about it all.