When the multimedia exhibition becomes the new blue ocean, where should we go next?

  ■ Chief reporter Fan Xin

  The imperial cat of the Forbidden City overthrew the Qing Dynasty imperial "Beast Book", the seal was unbalanced, and the beasts scattered.

Following scenes of illusions unfolded by multimedia methods such as sound and light, people followed the beast Baize, looking for its missing friends, and embarked on a journey of complementing the "Beast Book"..." "Mythical Animal World-Multimedia Comprehensive Exhibition", recently landed on the new landmark of Shanghai's culture and art-West Bund Yidao, which opened people's eyes with innovative viewing experience.

  Multimedia language, virtual technology and interactive experience constitute this exhibition, which are based on the digital "re-creation" of ancient beasts selected from "Beast Book".

"Pushed" to people with high-tech means is the world of sacred beasts imagined by the ancients, as well as the profound traditional culture.

From the perspective of the industry, a type of cultural exhibition that does not use cultural relics itself, and simply uses multimedia technology to tell Chinese traditional culture, is forming a "new cultural creation".

To what extent can it activate traditional culture and how to optimize people's sense of acquisition of the value behind cultural relics is worthy of industry thinking.

What is the cultural capacity of the exhibition "translated" from the "Beast Book" made by the Qianlong Emperor

  On the surface, the innovative viewing experience of the "Mythical Beast" exhibition benefited from the immersive scene created by emerging technologies such as immersive interaction and digital art.

From the perspective of the industry, the more valuable part is that it deeply excavated the core cultural relic, the "Animal Tree" in the Palace Museum, into a story with a plot advancement. The technology and content complement each other and convey historical and cultural knowledge. It also conveys traditional Chinese values.

  The "Beast Book", which became the original point of the exhibition, is a book of animal pictorials with both pictures and texts. It is divided into six volumes and painted a total of 180 different portraits of beasts, beasts, divine beasts, and ordinary animals. The pen paintings not only reflect the characteristics of ancient Chinese zoology and mythology, but also permeate the aesthetics of the mutual influence of Eastern and Western art.

Focusing on the theme of "Looking for the Disappeared Friends in "Beasts", the exhibition designed 11 core exhibition areas, 12 unlocked levels, natural elements, information on sacred animals, and related traditions such as astronomy, geography, medicine, and mythical literature. Cultural knowledge is contained in all kinds of interactive experience.

A small program "scan to get clues to the beasts" is provided on the scene, which can reveal the plot at any time, reveal the secret knowledge, and attract people to find out.

  According to the reporter's experience, the whole exhibition process was not only fun, but also buried a lot of knowledge eggs.

For example, familiar vocabularies such as Jiguang, Chaos, and Taotie all come from divine beasts, while uncommon words such as 狏ji, pingyi, and 狻猊 are the names of divine beasts.

  The curator of this exhibition, Lu Weimin, worked at the Shanghai Museum for many years.

She explained her curatorial philosophy to reporters in this way: "In our tradition, there is a certain connection between the mythical beast and the hermit. It is in a semi-hidden state, and it can enter the world or be born. Human beings live in harmony. The ancient Chinese regarded the beasts as a medium for understanding nature. Their concept of beasts is actually a concept of nature, a harmonious concept of mutual respect and understanding. This is what the exhibition most wants to convey to the audience."

The cultural and cultural exhibition cannot be satisfied with "make the cultural relics move and make the audience cheer"

  The reporter noticed that “opening up” cultural relics and national treasures in digital form combined with creative interactive gameplay has formed a trend of exhibitions in the past year or two.

For example, last year's exhibition "The Ocean World in the Forbidden City", which landed in Yuyuan, Shanghai, "revived" the magical world of marine life in Qianlong's pillow book "Sea Mistake", which made people feel novel.

  In the opinion of industry insiders and academic experts, the use of multimedia to achieve public participation and emotional connection is more necessary for cultural exhibitions than for general art exhibitions.

Huang Yiqian, Ph.D. in Fine Arts and a young teacher at Shanghai University, often visits the museum. She found that although the bronzes, pottery jars, porcelain and other cultural relics in the museum are of great value, most people often feel obscure when viewing them.

In addition to the physical object itself, most of the time the contact with the public is only the three lines of text on the explanatory card, namely the name, the year and the place of origin.

In her view, the cultural and expo exhibition needs to fit public education to realize the popularization of cultural relics, historical and cultural knowledge.

This kind of popularization tends to join the mind and heart after the public participates in person. Multimedia is an effective means to achieve public participation, especially in attracting young people to get close to the treasures of Chinese culture.

  There is no doubt that the prospect of the multimedia exhibition is a blue ocean.

However, it is worth noting that the threshold for such an exhibition to truly display its due public education is actually very high.

During the curatorial process of this exhibition, Lu Weimin had personal feelings about this: “It may not depend on how brilliant the technology is and how strong the interaction is, but on how wide and deep the interpretation of cultural relics is. Does it show the value behind it? It is not only to make the cultural relics move and make the audience cheer, but also to have emotional and ideological interaction with the audience to open up their multi-level and multi-angle understanding of the cultural relics. "The Deputy Research Librarian of the Palace Museum Wu Meng has many experiences of inspecting similar exhibitions at home and abroad. In her opinion, the criteria for considering multimedia cultural exhibitions are actually the same as considering traditional cultural exhibitions-from the inside, both need Whether it expresses the spiritual and cultural core of museums or cultural relics; the external presentation depends on whether it has reached the taste, standard and characteristics of cultural institutions in terms of aesthetics.

Match the inside and outside, and have both the quality of the text, so that you can be gentle.

"Culture can't be just a skin of a multimedia cultural exhibition, otherwise such an exhibition will become another kind of technology exhibition or contemporary art exhibition, and may even become a playground." Good multimedia cultural exhibitions should ultimately point to museums. Point to the cultural relics themselves that come from the depths of history.