PROJECTION-BASED IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE IN HELGE AND'S RUIN
See the ruin coming to life with the help of projected animations, captivating images, and sound and music.
About the case
Spree has, on behalf of the National Heritage Board and in collaboration with the Gotland Museum, been involved in developing a projection-based immersive experience in Helge And’s ruin inside Visby on Gotland. Spree has created a number of animated clips of, church paintings coming to life, a crackling wall and a hypocaust system, among other things. Spree also produced sound effects for the experience and was involved in the preparatory work when the concept and script were being created.
The immersive experience takes the viewers on a journey in Helge And’s ruin, from the time the original church was built in the 13th century, until it became a ruin in the 16th century. The story is told by pre-recorded guides where the animations and sound effects Spree has made complement the guides’ storytelling and bring the ruin to life. The National Heritage Board’s purpose with the experience was, among other things, to investigate and explore how projection technology in practice with can give life to a place and what is required to achieve a truly immersive experience.
A good practise for immersive experiences
In addition to creating a captivating and immersive experience, the purpose of the National Heritage Board was to produce a good practice for this type of completely immersive experiences. With this project as a basis, museums and others can then get inspiration, help and insights into what is required to create and build a projection-based immersive experience. Lessons you can get from the project are, for example, what it is that costs money and what kind of technology, ie. what projectors, sound equipment, computers and more have been used and what problems and obstacles can be good to think about when creating similar experiences.
Intimate event with invited guests
The immersive event has currently only been shown once to a small group of invited guests from Gotland, where Gotland Museum, the Swedish Real Estate Agency, the Gotland Region and the National Heritage Board were some of the participants. Originally the thought was that the event would be shown over several days, but due to Covid-19, so far only a smaller event has been arranged.
Modular and flexible
The Immersive experience in Helge And's ruin is modular and flexible as it consists of several parts that can be used separately and set up in different places. The purpose behind this is to be able to show different types of immersive experiences depending on needs, location and budget.
See the experience!
The immersive experience is best experienced on site in Helge And’s ruin, where the ruin itself helps to build the atmosphere for the spectators. However, the National Heritage Board has made a 360-degree film about the experience that captures the feeling of the experience in a good way. Feel free to click the button below and watch the 360 movie on their facebook page.
Inside the Swedish National Heritage Board’s blog “K-blogg”, you can, for example, read more about the event itself and how they went about assembling and rigging all the equipment required for the experience and what kind of equipment has been used and more.
Verktyg
Spree created five animated clips that consisted of everything from a crackling wall to church paintings that came to life. The programs used to create the clips were Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Character Animator.
Reference material
To create the various animations, we received reference images from the Swedish National Heritage Board, which they had taken from several different churches around Gotland. As Helge And's ruin has no paintings or windows left, the images and the animations Spree created from other church paintings were used to show visitors what it might have looked like in Helge And's ruin earlier when it was a church.
Difficult lighting conditions
Projection experiences are generally very much affected by the lighting conditions that occupy the place where the projections are to be displayed. Helge And's ruin has both roofs and walls but is still very difficult to obscure. Tests were performed on site during the daytime where they blocked windows and other light inlets and tested using a "commercial" projector. However, it was concluded that to get the best experience, the event needs to take place in the evening with a brighter projector. In another environments where you can control the light in an easier way, the experience can be played with cheaper projectors.
About the National Heritage Board
“The National Heritage Board is the national authority in Sweden that leads and supports the work of preserving, using and developing the cultural heritage.
The responsibility primarily covers issues of cultural landscapes, cultural environments, cultural objects and museums.
Our activities must, together with the efforts made by other actors, lead to the national goals for cultural policy and the state’s cultural environment work being met. We start from the goals and the assignments the government gives us in instructions and regulatory letters.
Our operations are located in Visby, Stockholm and Tumba, we also have operations at our destinations in Glimmingehus and Old Uppsala. We are about 270 employees who make up about 240 full-time employees. Read more about the National Heritage Board’s organization here. “
