Client:
Annette S. Lee / Native Skywatchers Design
for the Great River Children’s Museum
St, Cloud, MN
The Great River Children’s Museum Headwaters ceiling installation integrates immersive animation of three day and three night cycles designed to create an imaginative, relaxing, and deep feeling of connection in nature. The sound-based art and soundscape design includes a place-based rich tapestry of audio textures that reflect the diverse and rich acoustic environment in Minnesota, especially along the Great River, the Mississippi River. The experience in the Headwaters exhibit space is an acknowledgement to sky and earth and our human participation in the tapestry of life.
Kent Golden was invited by Annette S. Lee of Native Skywatcher Design Studio to be on the design team to lead the System Design for the AV Ceiling Projection and Sound Design project at the Great River Children’s Museum in central Minnesota. Motion graphics animator Annette S. Lee was the creative lead on the project, providing stunning artwork that is now permanently displayed on the ceiling of the Headwaters exhibit space. Kent Golden led the design, programming, and installation of the audio/video experience.
The experience cycles through three days and nights of content, which includes natural elements such as clouds, birds, and stars, as well as meaningful artistic representations of constellations that are important to the indigenous peoples of Minnesota.
High-powered laser projectors are blended together to create a seamless projection on the large 40′ x 18′ ceiling. A robust surround sound audio system includes 7 speakers and 2 subwoofers for solid ambient audio and music playback. DMX lighting control was used to display colors that pair with the video around the projection perimeter to expand and complete the experience to the side walls. Special ambient lighting to simulate fireflies was implemented within the fabricated trees of the woods, and additional DMX down lights provide illumination in the space that ties to the day and night cycles.
Credits: Ceiling projection and Sound Design by Native Skywatchers Design Studios LLC ©2025. Fabrication of the surrounding exhibit, including faux fire, by Split Rock Studios. NSDS – Annette S. Lee, PhD, DSc, MFA, MFA & Kent Golden, MA. Copyright 2025 – Annette S. Lee, PhD, DSc, MFA, MFA. Used with permission.
Project Included:
- Blended projection mapping of 2 high-power laser projectors
- Audio system design with 7 speakers and 2 subwoofers
- DMX lighting control
- Custom show programming
- Custom light control
- Custom mount fabrication
- Coordination with construction contractors and fabricators
- On-site installation
Above images copyright 2025 – Annette S. Lee, PhD, DSc, MFA, MFA. Used with permission.
System Design:
