ReInHerit a Museum: Immersive Performance at the Boccf

The Immersive Performance “ReInHerit a Museum” was organised on the 19th of May 2023, at the premises of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation and was organized by the CYENS Centre of Excellence, partner of the ReInHerit program, in collaboration with the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and the Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra.

The show “ReInHerit a Museum” was one of the events organized within the ReInHerit research program “Redefining the Future of Culture Heritage: Creating an Innovative Model for Sustainability”.

With the use of interactive modern technologies as well as live music, the visitor was “immersed” in the world of the performance, re-experiencing the museum as a lively, creative and at the same time familiar space. The show combined large-scale interactive sound installation with elements of augmented reality. A large group of musicians from the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and the Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra move around the space playing music and simultaneously creating real-time graphics and video projection mapping highlighted the Foundation’s current temporary and permanent exhibitions.

The show was characterized by an innovative approach to curating the visitor experience at archaeological sites in which visitors freely explored the building and museums of the Cultural Foundation, forming their own personal impression of the site and its exhibits. Through a mobile app, specially created for this event, visitors had the opportunity to view objects from the Foundation’s Ethnographic Collection, which are not currently on display in spaces accessible to the public, as 3D augmented reality projections inside the spaces of the museum.

The exhibits of this “virtual” exhibition were scattered around the premises of the building and depending on the visitors’ interaction, they appeared on their screens and activate the sound installation located in the space. The virtual exhibition consisted of 12 objects of folk art from the Pieridis ethnographic collection, mainly from the 19th century, which were used in the daily life of that time, such as examples of silversmithing, woodcarving, ceramics and metalwork.

Credits:
Performance direction and music composition: Andreas Papapetrou
Programming & mobile app design: Fotos Frangoudes, Alexios Polydorou
Video Art: Stefanos Papadas
2D animation design: Alexis Baldwin
Museologist: Maria Shehade
Communication Officer: Chrystalla Charalambous-Papadopoulou
Project Manager: Niki Kyriakou
Project Coordinator: Kleanthis Neokleous
Videography: Giorgos Dimoglou