Ars Excavandi
Matera European Capital of Culture 2019
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Matera European Capital of Culture 2019
OUR SERVICES
- Multimedia set-up
- Exhibition Design
- Content Production
- Serious game / Gamification
- Video Production
- Event / Temporary Exhibition
- Design / Manufacturing
From caves, to early settlements, to large cities
The game becomes learning
We developed an engaging itinerary for this important exhibition, incorporating game stations, touch screen panels, projections and multimedia videos. All this with the aim of transforming a complex subject into an exciting and enjoyable journey through history and making it accessible to everyone, young and old.
The emblematic city of underground art hosts the exhibition
There could be no more representative location to host Ars Excavandi than Matera, European Capital of Culture 2019. The exhibition is in fact the first survey of the arts, excavations and practices from which architecture as we know it today will evolve: it is a journey that starts from the first shelters created by man, in the ravines that nature offered, passes through the first dwellings and arrives at the monuments and great cities.
It reinterprets from a contemporary perspective the culture of underground art from the first use of natural cavities and rock carvings to the creation of caves, dwellings, monuments, waterworks, cities and landscapes based on excavation. The tour, divided between the Ridola Museum and the hypogea of Palazzo Lanfranchi, accompanies visitors on an itinerary ranging from the Palaeolithic to the present, through which they can access the womb of the Earth, experiencing at first hand the magnificence of excavated architecture, the result of hard and skilful human work.
The route, which unfolds in five stages characterised by the elements Air, Fire, Eros, Water, Earth marked by the colours Yellow, Red, Ultraviolet, Blue, Green and a series of sounds and scents, unfolds in a chronological manner with references at the bottom of the timeline. On the walls, there are continuous timeless analogies with art, crafts, traditions, folklore, music and rituals.
An innovative set-up designed and developed by ETT to create an immersive context and a unique atmosphere, between past and future, under the banner of interaction and experientiality.
Inside the path is a reconstruction of the Murgia plateau and the Sassi of Matera as described in the 16th century. A play of light and projections will allow an X-ray view of the city, showing part of the more than 20,000 square metres of underground structures and architecture hidden under the city of Matera.
Who we are? Exhibition questions and the interactive game
The exhibition aims to stimulate visitors’ curiosity through a series of questions that will be answered during the exhibition. Why was the first excavation made? Are cave art and cave thinking relevant today? What is the oldest city in the world? During the tour, an interactive game Who are we? will be organised, asking similar questions to visitors who can participate thanks to a RIFD bracelet.
The game ends with the answer that we are what we know, and the visitor will receive a Digital Nomad certificate indicating his or her degree of Universal Empathy with the figure that identifies him or her to one of the characters in the exhibition and can therefore be one or one: Perceptive Neanderthal; Innovative Sapien; Shaman Discoverer; Paleo Astronaut.
The route
CAPTION 1 – In the brain cavern
Colour White-Yellow, element Air, scent of jasmine,
The dimensionless space of caves makes us reflect on the concept of time. From Plato’s myth to the camera obscura invented by the Arab Al Azhem in the 10th century and used by Renaissance masters to the invention of cinema and holograms, immersive projections show that vision and interpretation depend on how we perceive and know. Upon entering the room, visitors pass in front of a light source that projects their shadows onto the opposite wall. The projection of the visitors’ shadows on the two walls reveals a series of back-projected images that float as if suspended and take up Plato’s myth. The more people there are in the room, the more their shadows reveal the back-projected image. There is also a monitor in the room on the story of Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham as food for thought on the evolution of optics as a modern science.
TAPE 2 – Alliance and symbiosis
Colour red, element Fire, scent of benzoin, sound of explosions
The conventional image of evolution as a linear progression from hominids to their current physical appearance is false and is best represented by a series of branches, crosses and contaminations. In this evolutionary line, the invention of fire was a key step, as can also be seen in the monitor showing a video on the discovery of fire. Instead, in the projection, from the darkness Prometheus appears in shadow, holding in one hand, hidden in a ferula, the fire to be given to men. This is the period of the great cave art testified by the Lascaux cave dating back to 15,500 B.C., which is shown in the other projection that focuses on the figure of the bull. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
TAPE 3 – The Creator Sound
Ultraviolet colour, Eros element, myrrh fragrance
In the first projection, the expansion of the Universe since the Big Bang is simulated on a black screen according to a representation of expanding lights and galaxies.
On the monitor, a looped video shows the destruction of the float of the Madonna della Bruna, which is repeated cyclically every 2 July.
TAPE 4 – Water maze
Colour blue, element Water, scent lotus flowers, sound of rushing water
In the first projection, a map is shown showing the spread of Neolithic culture and focuses on the main settlement sites, Jericho, Harappa, Murgia Timone, Ur, Stonehenge, Memphis, Hili, Dilmun, Troy, Knossos. The second projection takes up the importance of water through the reproduction of waterfalls. In the monitor, there will be an in-depth video on the symbiosis between the city of Petra and Matera.
TAPE 5 – Matera Matrix
Colour Green, Element Earth, scent mauve
The projection shows a series of images of the subsoil with roots to land in the cave; then it goes up to the surface where hanging gardens can be seen. The vision of detail widens to a panoramic view of Matera, which recedes until it even sees Mars. The monitor will show a video that takes up the theme of roots and another that refers to the Tricarico Carnival, showing the strong connection with the territory whose roots lie in ancient customs.
Exhibit VR for visiting the hypogea of Palazzo Lanfranchi
The virtual reality application developed by ETT S.p.A., located on the ground floor of the Ridola Museum, has been realised for the hypogea of Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera and allows visitors to experience a virtual tour of the underground spaces, thanks to 360° shots of the environments through visors.
The VR exhibit creates a totally immersive experience involving a high emotional involvement of visitors, thanks also to the POV- Point of View technique, a very powerful tool that allows users to experience the scene in the first person and feel part of the narrated story, thus facilitating the learning process and creating a memorable and multisensory experience. The virtual visit to the hypogea of Palazzo Lanfranchi makes it possible to overcome the architectural barriers that the hypogea have by their intrinsic nature and to guarantee virtual accessibility to this priceless heritage also for weaker social categories otherwise excluded from the museum visit experience due to a physical disability.
Thanks to the virtual reality application, visitors will be able to experience a sense of reality never before perceived, and will thus be able to have an experience that is almost entirely comparable to the direct experience of discovering even the most secret corners of the hypogea.