The new Cinema Archaeology layout. The restyling of floor +5 at the Mole Antonelliana is now completed
The National Cinema Museum presents the completion of its restyling of the Archaeology of Cinema floor, a vast project for the renovation of its layouts and content under the tagline of A Museum for Everyone, a Museum for You, aimed at making the Mole Antonelliana an even more welcoming space, allowing everybody to move around easily according to their own interests and needs.
Its wide recourse to the new digital technologies - which project was presented last December and was implemented thanks to the support of the Turin Chamber of Commerce and technological coordination by Torino Wireless – aims at improving visitor experience for all types of public (with special attention for persons with disabilities), facilitating knowledge of the works on display, allowing a choice of customised itineraries and broadening one’s experience before and also after one’s visit to the Museum.
This is a project involving the building in its entirety, thanks to a free, open WiFi network, accessible from all the levels at the Mole Antonelliana, the creation of 250 Tags placed along the visiting circuit to allow the visualization of extra information through personal smart-phones or thanks to the iPads provided, digital captions on 9 and 7 inch tablets and suggestive interactive hubs.
Carried out thanks to the support of Compagnia di San Paolo, the restyling of the floor dedicated to Cinema Archaeology will feature all of the eight entirely or partially newly planned themed halls: Shadow Theatre, Optics, Camera Obscuras and Stereoscopy, Panorama, Phantasmagoria, Moving Images, Chronophotography and the Birth of Cinema.
The new layout will allow a more engaging and accessible tour as well as the reliving, through technology, of those spectacular experiences which already placed spectators more than two centuries ago at the core of an artificial visual universe, giving them the feeling of being inside another reality. This is the case of Panorama and Phantasmagoria, which guarantee “immersion capacity” to all visitors, be they normally-abled or disabled, thanks to a multi-sensorial layout accompanying the more traditional showcasing tools (scenography and media of various kinds), a carefully planned use of sound (music, special noises and sound effects (created by sound designers on loan from the film world).
The whole display circuit also features 6 visual and tactile models to touch and to explore by hand, so as to experience how the main pre-cinema devices, and therefore the mechanics of the images they produce, function. Nearby are visual and tactile panels and 22 optical Tags and touch-Tags (NFC) which activate extra multi-medial contents and an audio description of the texts by using one’s smart-phone or the iPad guide.
The new circuit proposed offers different insight levels and an interesting novelty: special signage indicates a “fast” itinerary by showing highlights that permit a synthetic but exhaustive overall view.
“This is the most ambitious renovation project since its opening - states the Director of the National Cinema Museum Alberto Barbera - a work in progress which took off over a year ago and will see us busy for another two at least, with the intention of making a visit at the Museum an even more vibrant, satisfying and unforgettable experience. Its new contents and an intelligent use of digital technologies are generating unprecedented possibilities for serving knowledge and every type of public. I should like to underline the great commitment this vast project involves, which has been made possible thanks to support from numerous partners who believe, as we do, in the necessity of investing on the future of cultural institutions even in times of curtailed economic and financial resources”.
As Guido Bolatto, Secretary General of the Turin Chamber of Commerce, points out: “The increasingly more frequent dialogue between culture and technology is not only allowing the enhancement of museum heritage across the territory, but also allowing our ICT companies to prove themselves in researching and putting forward innovative solutions. This is why the Turin Chamber of Commerce has decided to invest over several years in this ambitious project, which is making the Museum more accessible and more engaging from every point of view thanks to the new technologies: from free WiFi to enhanced virtuality, to care for special audiences (families, foreign tourists, partially blind visitors, etc.)”.
The “A Museum for Everyone, a Museum for You” project will proceed with a new layout on the floor dedicated to the Cinema Machine (level +15) and the implementation of new solutions and access strands also addressed to persons with hearing disabilities.