Behind the scenes
An immersive visitor’s tour
The exhibition has been designed around three main focuses :
- An educational focus thanks to the texts and an interactive multimedia mapping application that allows visitors to follow the characters and the major steps of the war.
- An iconographic focus with a selection of 100 items, mainly from the Musée de la Romanité collections, gathered around the exhibition’s central piece, the mosaic of Achilles on Skyros
- An imaginative focus with the creation of a monumental, audiovisual and immersive video mural by artist and videographer Dominik Barbier and Anne Van den Steen / FEARLESS (immersive set design), which really plunges the visitor into the myth of Achilles
“Before Skyros, there were no foregone conclusions. When Achilles was uncovered by Odysseus, his destiny began to unravel. Achilles’ decision was like an explosion with huge consequences. The Trojan War was to take place and it would be the last act of heroic times. The “highlight” of the exhibition, the mosaic of Achilles on Skyros from the Musée de la Romanité collections, also marks a turning point of the set design for visitors, as they leave behind them the “classic” presentation of items, to cross through the gynaeceum on a walkway up over the mosaic, and arrive at the stern of a ship headed out to sea. This vast space opening onto the spectacular tale of the Trojan War is a surprising and stark contrast to the previous part of the exhibition. From the gynaeceum to the open sea, Skyros is where everything changed, when Achilles embraced his fate and chose a heroic but short life, ensuring that his name would remain immortal. ”
An immersive mural
A common thread of the various sections of the exhibition is the screening of a huge immersive digital mural.
Dominik Barbier is an artist specialised in the creation of immersive art. He is behind the creation of several monumental installations that have won awards and been shown all over the world, especially in the world of theatre with his design for ‘Hamlet Machine’ in 2003. Anne Van den Steen is an artist, watercolour painter and graphic designer, set designer and architect. She co-founded the Les Instants Vidéo Festival. Their work is perfectly complementary and the two artists chose to work on public spaces and museums together in 2008, always with a very demanding view of the artistic creations they come up with. Together, they have created over forty immersive exhibitions and permanent designs, in France and Italy. The aim of this monumental mural is to plunge visitors into the fascinating imaginary world of Achilles, providing – through a contemporary lens – a reproduction of the magnificence of illustrations, beauty of sculptures, depth of the myth, poetry of ancient texts and much more. The mural uses a vast collection of illustrations to provide a link to memory, the imagination, belief and mystery, to submerge the visitor in a myth that is very much present and alive. This immersive mural has managed to combine the very best of traditional set design with an immersive tool. It is not simply a question of adding screenings to set design as this concept is fairly common. Here, it is about coming up with an all-round and coherent innovation in terms of the presentation of this audacious visitor’s tour, that is both thorough and appealing, and which really packs a punch by offering visitors a unique experience that covers a range of levels: scientific, historic, cultural, poetic and artistic.
An interactive map ‘the origins of the trojan war’
Dive into ‘the origins of the Trojan War’ with the touch-screen map. You have control over the space and time of the story at your fingertips. The characters move around the interactive map as the story goes on, and visitors can use the timeline to discover the various events at their own pace. The whole instrument is beautifully illustrated by Anna Maria Riccobono who has produced a personal interpretation of the myth, while remaining loyal to iconography of Ancient Times. This fun and user-friendly device is accessible to everyone and was produced by the Musée de la Romanité in partnership with Territorium.io, to either pass on the key notions to visitors looking for an express tour, or to provide detailed explanations for those curious to go into more depth.
