It will be Burano's first, no doubt about it. "The Interactive Time Room," the prototype designed for Upskill Venice that allows people to experience turn-of-the-century Burano and understand the importance of lace culture, will be realized in the coming months.
It had long been on Atelier Martina Vidal's mind to create something innovative that would tell the story of a tradition, that of lace, which must necessarily project into the future.
For Sergio Vidal and Marta Perissinotto, the ViviBurano project, and specifically the augmented reality prototype "The interactive time room" created by the students ofITS FITSTIC in Bologna under the guidance of Michele Tagliavini, Upskill 4.0 project manager, was a revelation: they understood how digital could help them ferry the culture of lace into the new millennium. "It was finally something concrete," Marta Perissinotto tells us, "we saw the visor, it wasn't just words!"
In the months since the prototype presentation last April at M9, there have been big changes in the Atelier, which is expanding and setting up a new lace museum with the Family collection. And in 2024 there will also be virtual reality.
The team responsible for the project is led by Alice Rizzetto of Upskill 4.0 with the important contribution of Vitruvio Virtual Reality, an agency specializing in innovative digital-based projects. In recent weeks, the team has traveled to Burano and collected the iconographic material that will be used to concretely realize this virtual space.
The project involves the use of virtual reality (VR). With virtual reality, there is an immersive experience that simulates an existing or imaginary environment: scenery is created using 360-degree panoramic photographs or 3D graphics, allowing users to "visit" and explore a place interactively by wearing VR devices such as viewers and controllers. And this is precisely what the Vitruvius team has been realizing in recent weeks.
"We thought of virtual reality because we don't want to highlight lace as a product but to tell its uniqueness and originality to people far away, to countries like the United States, for example," Marta Perissinotto tells us, "we want our current and future customers to have a full immersion in a virtual environment, allowing them to experience a place as an experience, even if they are not physically present in Burano. With the hope that once here, they will visit us, or even just perceive the value from a distance."