Interactive installation of Renaissance Cartoons
The Pinacoteca Albertina of Turin houses an extraordinary collection of Piedmontese cartoons from the 16th century, donated by King Carlo Alberto in 1832. It is a unique collection in the world because of the number and quality of the drawings from the Renaissance, mainly referring to the masterpieces of Gaudenzio Ferrari and his school.
For the new layout of the Sala dei Cartoni Gaudenziani, we have designed an interactive station with high-resolution images of the preparatory drawings. The installation allows the visitor to discover down to the smallest details of the artworks and their context, and also learn about reproduction techniques through an additional documentary video. Moreover, we developed a smart lighting system for the room, which keeps a safe environment for artwork conservation while creating a suggestive surrounding atmosphere.
CLIENT Pinacoteca Albertina di Torino, Consulta per la Valorizzazione dei Beni Artistici e Culturali di Torino
PARTNER Ribes Solutions
YEAR 2019
FEATURES
- Interactive station with touch screen
- High-definition images
- Documentary video production
- Video storytelling
- UX-UI
- Content architecture
- Smart lighting system
- Customizable in multiple languages
Project
The Museum and the Consulta devised a new design project for the room where the cartoons are displayed to the public, intending to enhance the role of Turin as an Italian and international cultural center, thus contributing to the further promotion of the city’s historical and artistic heritage.
The technology that we developed for the exhibition allows the visitor to discover the secrets and techniques of the Italian Renaissance. Through interactive communication and the lighting in the room, we created an intimate and theatrical ambiance: the artworks emerge from the darkness as entities suspended in time and space.
INTERACTIVE STATION WITH HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES
Information about the artworks is available in both English and Italian, and it is displayed on the touch-screen that we strategically placed in front of the sliding panels, which contain the cartoons on display.
Through this surface, it is possible to deepen many aspects of the fifty-nine Renaissance drawings: it gives access to each one’s particular history and its reproductions. The full length of the details becomes available thanks to the “Explore the drawing” function, which allows to zoom in into the image and increase or decrease its contrast.
Thanks to the high-definition images and the academic essays it is possible to compare the preparatory drawings between them and with the finished artworks –nowadays preserved in several Italian and foreign museums.
It also opens a window to the artistic workshops of the sixteenth century and the way art education was imparted before the birth of the Academies of Fine Arts. The installation also features an interactive map of Europe that shows the accomplished artworks and other replicas in their origin area.
Besides, we rethought the room’s lighting system and implemented LED lights and movement sensors that are directly connected to the interactive station. We also installed software into the touch screen that transforms into an element for managing the lighting intensity.
The totem, designed to be accessible to people with physical disabilities, becomes at the same time a tool for learning and a magnifying glass in the Gaudenzian Cartoons. We conceived and created all of its contents keeping in mind the particular context of the Museum and carrying on its institutional style and graphic identity.
DOCUMENTARY VIDEO
As part of the content for the installation, we created an introductory video to present the exhibition to the visitor in collaboration with Ribes Solutions. When the interactive station detects a person in the room, the touch screen starts to play the documentary automatically.
It begins with Carlo Alberto’s effigy on a coin, which becomes the starting point for telling the history of the building and its relationship with the figure of the king, after whom the Pinacoteca Albertina is named.
The film uses pleasant and engaging language that allows explaining technical aspects also to a non-specialized audience. Its audio is in Italian and backed up with English subtitles. We also used this audiovisual material to support the communication campaign for the new exhibition room.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
SOFTWARE
- Krpano
- Arduino
HARDWARE
- Touch Screen