“Live Museum, Live Change” Exhibition Design
Trajan’s Markets are an extensive complex of ruins in the slopes of Quirinal’s hill that have seen the evolution of Rome since the imperial ages to our times. Headquarters of administrative activities, and very connected to the biggest of the Imperial Forums (Trajan’s Forum), since 2007 also hosts the Museo dei Fori Imperiali.
Live Museum, Live Change is a project curated by PAV, winner of the ABC – Atelier Arte Belleza e Cultura of the Lazio Region, whose aim is to open the Trajan’s Markets to new original narratives and to new relations that inhabit this space. From Visivalab we take on the design of the exhibition furniture and the interactive narrative supports, like videowall or touch screen installations, open to collect the artistic expressions that developed across the project.
CLIENT ABC- Atelier Arte Bellezza e Cultura della Regione Lazio
PARTNER ECCOM- Idee per la Cultura, Melting Pro
YEAR 2019
FEATURES
- Design of the exhibition furniture
- Touch screen monitors
- Interactive map
- Backlit panels
- Sound immersive experience
- Video storytelling
- Videowall
- Website
Project
The Live Museum, Live Change project was born to improve and value the cultural places, including Trajan’s Markets. The axis of the project is the “transformation”, understood as a natural and complex phenomenon that makes the museum a living organism, inhabited and in constant evolution.
To this end, Eccom proposed an interesting call for artists, playwrights and artisans that, with the help of students of some high schools in Rome, went into an adventure of unprecedented digital narration, destined to interpret in a new way one of the most beautiful and significant monuments in the world.
The project contemplates the creation of four main itineraries: artistic residencies, digital narration workshops, design objects and sound dramas.
These workshops bring life to very specific personal and collective narratives that are gathered, spread and amplified through the technology developed in Visivalab.
We made sure that the design of the furniture of the exhibition creating narrative and dynamic supports open to the artistic expressions of this co-creative work that grows and evolves over time. (story doing)
We also created a scenographic system that allows different elements with different functions: from the videowall to the sound interactive map, from the touch screen installations to the most classic display case.
DESIGN OF THE EXPOSITION FURNITURE
We base the exposition design of Live Museum, Live Change in luminous and/or interactive elements that illuminate the rooms and interest categories, to explain the new relations of the Trajan’s Markets with the community.
These illuminated and interactive bodies define the sections of the exposition space and, at the same time, transmit the digital narration and make a warm and welcoming environment. These are simple elements (parallelepipeds) accompanied by graphics introducing contents that we wanted to treat in that space.
The supporting structure to each of these interest points is conceived as an «easel» and is made with noble materials like concrete and wood, while the details are build in glass and iron and stainless steel. With a double function of design and solidity, the structures are anchored to concrete elements.
We think of the «easel», essential in its form, since it decorates the space without invading it: a style that conjugates the difference between the old and the new. Plus, the easy management and the versatility of this structure allows to reorganize the configuration if necessary.
VIDEOWALL: CREATIVE NARRATIONS WALL
To begin with, a backlit panel introduces the contents and characteristics of the project, while the videowall with various screens welcomes the visitors with a small trailer of the projects and collects the produced narratives in the ateliers, seeing the transformations, encounters and new ways of life in the museum.
It is a projection system through the various screens synchronized between them. The “digital wall” is a permanent structure but in a constant evolution, since it actualizes and always enriches the narratives with new ones.
The contents that are transmitted through this system are:
- Social wall: aggregation of the social media contents, through hashtags, to create links between the museum, its patrimony and the world.
- Interactions with the audience: interactive applications to build maps and databases with the participation of the visitors.
- Digital windows about the activities of other regional ateliers: contents and narrations about the activities of the other ateliers, including the call, created with a digital network between the different planned locations.
Specific objectives:
- Making the routes of the ateliers and narrations generated able to be used and interactive, giving also evidence of the collective transformation and revitalizing work of the museum.
- Creating an open and dynamic installation that narrates the activities, people and processes that inhabit Trajan’s Markets.
- Experimenting with the digital narration as a communication strategy of the museum patrimony.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
PROGRAMMING
- PHP
- MySql
SOFTWARE
- Nodejs
- Mongodb
HARDWARE
- Touch Screen
- Electric Paint
INSTALLATION OF THE INTERACTIVE TOUCH SCREEN
There are three installations of the interactive touch screen differentiated by different formats of storytelling:
- In the first one, the video contents created by school students and artists can be seen and selected (video storytelling)
- In the second one, the textual contents and descriptions created by artists can be read and selected (text narration)
- The third one, the audio content about the history of Trajan’s Markets can be selected and listened to. (audio storytelling)
“THE ATEMPORAL MARKETS, IN THE FRONTIER OF SOUND”
It is an interactive installation: a sound map that collects and explains the ambience in the Trajan’s Markets through the work of different artists, created with the implication of schools and the Roman community.
It is a map of the market, in birch plywood and black DM, cut with a laser milling machine and numeric control and finished with a painting that acts as an electrical conduit for an integrated tactile system and new generation directional speakers, which allow selecting different audio contents that explain the history of the place.
It comes together, for example, a diversity of musical tracks inspired in the architecture of the museum, sound dramas connected to the experience and transformation of the markets, interviews and musical suggestions with the thematic of living, all in dialogue with the geography of the place and hood that receives it.
DISPLAY CASE
In addition to the narrative path and the design expository project of the previously described elements, we also have planned and build a display case with fabricated products.
This display case has the same structure and the same materials used for the backlit panel and the interactive installations. The display case pretends to be a reflecting moment and a physical testimony, and not only digital, of the activities developed inside the Markets.
WEBSITE
Traianolivemuseum wants to reflect the characteristics of the project of wanting to be a live organism, open, accessible and in constant transformation.
For that reason, we decided to use a multiplatform software, that allows to bring back the different kinds of content, as a product of the different reunions and planned workshops for the project.
In the “Narrazioni” section, the digital narrations of the students come together, as a result of the workshops conducted in the alternation school-work training that involved three schools from Rome.
In the “Atelier d’artista” section, on the other hand, we have decided to collect the interventions of the artists, playwrights and designers involved. It hosts all the interventions and expressive forms used, since music to photography, since performance to site-specific works.
The place is a mirror of the exposition, but also a representative showcase of the tendencies of contemporary art in Italy and beyond, an interesting stimulus to the renovation of our more evoking and rich places of the historical, artistic and urban patrimony of the country.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
PROGRAMMING
- PHP
- MySql
SOFTWARE
- Nodejs
- Mongodb
HARDWARE
- Touch Screen
- Electric Paint
