"The Hanging of Patrick O'Connor" Exhibit Sound Design

Project Description

Silver Oaks produced, engineered, programmed and installed a sound, light and image presentation for Dubuque, Iowa’s Old Jail Museum. Featured in the old limestone cell block of the historic 1856 jail, “The Hanging of Patrick O’Connor” is hosted by the ghost of O’Connor himself – the first prisoner ever to be hanged at the jail.

O’Connor, a peg-legged Irish immigrant, narrates the colorful history of the city’s crime and punishment, accompanied by intricate sound effects and music of the period. Once visitors are “locked in,” O’Connor’s story begins when Dubuque was a lead-mining boom town, attracting nefarious characters to its lucrative mines. Ghostly voices of various prisoners from the jail’s history pipe in throughout, and the story culminates with O’Connor’s hanging for the murder of a fellow miner.

A computer-controlled light creates atmospheric effects throughout the program and highlights historic objects that are part of the display. Images culled from Dubuque’s archives accompany the narration, along with tantalizing glimpses of the ghostly O’Connor himself – all via a turret-mounted video projector. In addition, a master show controller is programmed to automate the entire program, including house lights, room-darkening window shades, various banks of lights in and around the cells, DVD player, moving light, projector and surround-sound speaker system.