ETT enriches the MEI Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana (National Museum of Italian Emigration) in Genoa with “Cervelli in rete” (Brains on the Net), a new workstation designed with RAI Italia in the room dedicated to contemporary migration, an actual multimedia design project.
The new section of the Museum is configured as a pantograph machined wooden template to suggest the shape of a brain on which a multimedia show of significant graphic and emotional impact is projected. The work aims to enhance, by evoking the results of the ingenuity of Italians abroad, the agreement between the Museum and RAI Italia. This channel promotes the Italian language and culture in the Americas, Asia and Australia, taking advantage of the dense network of connections that characterises the community of Italians around the world.
Giovanni Verreschi, CEO of ETT SPA, said “‘Cervelli in rete’ constitutes another step in ETT’s journey within the MEI, the museum dedicated to emigration recognised not only in Italy but internationally. Following the collaboration at the opening of the MEI and the engagement with the section dedicated to sports, we became involved in this new adventure, realising that the story that began a year ago could continue if we took advantage of the documentary material made available by RAI Italia to interpret the migration phenomenon in a new light. Once again, the human figure has been placed at the centre of the narrative, depicted in the faces and indelible expressions of the generations that have represented Italy abroad. We can say”, emphasised Verreschi, “ that ETT has taken up a challenge that is first and foremost cultural, aware that the new technologies can come together in an expressive mix capable of capturing unprecedented sides of a story, specifically one of emigration, starting from the second half of the 19th century. Hardware, software and design were declined according to a unique register to restore the sense of a humanity that had to leave the territory of origin in search of new life stories”.
ETT realised and engineered the project by harmonising furniture, hardware and software elements. Around the silhouette of the brain, a dynamic LED pulsates to the rhythm of human breathing, suggestively giving life to the installation, which was conceived as a permanent endowment to enhance the intangible heritage of contemporary emigration. The management of the video player on the museum’s internet network allows for the quick replacement of the video projection content, in the event that the content needs to be revised or enhanced in the future, perhaps proposing a rotation of the numerous RAI materials available. To complete the project, a sticker graphic suggesting the outline of a face and an explanatory panel with a QR code leading the visitor to explore the pages of RAI Italia were installed. The subject of the video is inspired by the multitude of stories, people, professions and connections that the RAI material delivered to MEI. In the first instance, the numbers of emigration in recent years are presented, and the people are portrayed as a multitude of dots gathering in a community. Then the points acquire a face, transforming the multitude into an ever-expanding network. In this journey from the general to the particular, there is no shortage of insights into the lives, stories and ingenuity of exceptional people and their stories.