Immersive exhibition ‘Through the eyes of the wolf’ opened at MUSE
On November 4th at MUSE – Museo delle scienze of Trento opened the project exhibition “Through the eyes of the wolf“, an immersive experience about coexistence.
The actual opening was preceded by the event ‘Tempo da lupi’, a dialogue with Luigi Boitani, professor emeritus of La Sapienza University of Rome and one of the world’s leading wolf experts. The talk discussed the very first study on the wolf in Italy and Europe (set up by Boitani, David Mech and Erik Zimen in 1972), the first protection laws, the biology of the wolf, and above all coexistence. A challenge of yesterday and today, even though over the last fifty years the situation of the wolf population in Italy has changed profoundly. If the first biologists found themselves studying and protecting a species at risk of extinction, with a hundred or so individuals scattered across the mountains of central and southern Italy, today the results of the first national monitoring indicate the presence of 3,307 (between 2,945 and 3,608) wolves on the entire Italian territory, and therefore the need to find formulas for coexistence is more than topical.
The meeting with Luigi Boitani was followed by the actual opening of the exhibition. The new installation was introduced by MUSE Director Michele Lanzinger, the head of the MUSE Public Programmes Office Patrizia Famà, the Trento City Council’s Councillor for Culture Elisabetta Bozzarelli, the Director of the Alpi Marittime Protected Areas Luca Gautero and the exhibition co-curator Osvaldo Negra.
The messages developed by the exhibition are those of coexistence, study and prevention of threats to conservation, at the heart of the LIFE WolfAlps EU project. Thanks to the audio-visual installation, visitors can see the Alps from the point of view of a wolf in dispersal, and thus experience what it means for a wolf to live in a man-made environment.
In terms of set-up, a large, graffitied wolf’s head houses a high-resolution video projection stretching over an enveloping surface of more than 35 square metres and oriented, immersive sounds.
The immersive story takes place thanks to an original production set and filmed in Trentino, for which the troupe was assisted by researchers and communicators of the Life WolfAlps EU project to reconstruct the “typical” day of a wolf in the Alps, with a scientifically correct approach, but at the same time engaging and exemplary with respect to the many problems of coexistence. In particular, a special adaptation of cameras and optics was studied and developed for the filming requirements of the exhibition, necessary to increase the immersive effect of the footage.
“Through the eyes of the wolf” will be open at MUSE until February 19th 2023. In 2023 the immersive experience will also be hosted in Lombardy and Piedmont in an Alpine tour that will take the experience to the different project areas.
