Peter Purves of Idiom Design  and Pieter van der Merwe of The Maritime Museum  approached me to make the sound, lighting and control systems  for a model theatre display depicting the work of Clarkson Stanfield called  'A Diorama of Venice'.  Mike Lewis, a contact from the Geological Museum, made all the mechanics

Clarkson Stanfield  was a 19th centuary maritime artist  and also a theatre scene painter. He cunningly devised systems of moving backgrounds and ground rows plus special lighting effects, for example a scene when lit from the front completely changed when backlighting was applied.

Chris Baugh was commissioned to paint the moving scenery. The model theatre had a stage with a backdrop of  about 40cm. Chris made a painting 40cm high and around 10 metres long, depicting all the facets of Venice. The painting was rolled up on a mechanism and in use wound its way slowly from end to end. In those days before microprocessors were easy to use I designed a controller using a large disk that  made 1 revolution for the performance. I think there were 16 optical channels  controlling everything by using opaque areas on a film overlay.

The model was shown in the foyer of the National film theatre on the South Bank, then went to Germany before ending up in a museum in Clarkson Stanfield's home town of Sunderland.