YoIt starts with a thud, then an explosion and a deafening roar. A pyroclastic flow erupts from the volcano and rushes towards us at terrifying speed. Rains of ash seem to lash the space around us (well, technically, it’s a pumice lapilli unique to Mount Vesuvius) and, for a few minutes, visitors to the National Museum of Australia find themselves in Pompeii 1,946 years ago.
Immersive experiences, including increasingly sophisticated virtual reality technology, have gone from a gimmick to an essential component of successful museum exhibitions, despite criticism from academia that special effects can distract viewers. viewers of actual artifacts and exhibits, and are training a future generation to assume that entertainment is the primary function of museums.
Laurent Dondey, head of development and international tours at the Grand Palais Immersif (the French company behind Pompeii) says he understands some of the criticism of immersive technology in museums.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see Van Gogh smoking or scratching his head,” he says. “What we do is part art, part science… technology is part of the creative process that surprises the audience and can bring another layer of experience that, yes, is also a little fun.”
In Pompeii, which opened at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, Mount Vesuvius does its job every 15 minutes. The immersive experience is included in the price of admission, but at other blockbusters presented in Australia, where technology requires headphones and individual seating, there is an additional fee that can mean the cost of a day at the museum for a family amounts to hundreds of dollars.
More than half a million people visited the Australian Museum’s record-breaking Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition in Sydney, with a quarter opting to pay an extra $30 a head and join long queues to experience the virtual reality component .
The current Australian Museum blockbuster, Machu Picchu and the golden empires of PeruIt is the museum’s fourth installation that has an immersive component.
And technology is here to stay, says its director, Kim McKay.
“What we have to do today is offer experiences to people, and I don’t think museums are immune to that,” he says. “Museums have to evolve. Like everything else, you can’t just fix the past, we have to use new technology as it evolves.
“Children now expect a digital overlay and as a museum director, it is up to me and my team to decide how to balance the use of this technology to ensure it remains part of an authentic experience.”
Gedeon Experiences, the company that created Pompeii’s special effects, was granted exclusive access to the site’s archaeological excavations, off limits to the visiting public. For two years, Gedeon documented every day of the archaeologists’ work and then used CGI to reconstruct the city’s streets and houses.
Rather than distracting the visitor, the show informs and complements the more than 90 objects on loan from the Pompeii Archaeological Park, including frescoes, mosaics, jewellery, sculptures and household objects.
The ability of immersive technology to allow us to see and experience what has been lost in the ancient past should not be underestimated, says Dr Chiara O’Reilly, director of the museums and heritage program at the University of Sydney and co-author of the Rise of must-see exhibitions in Australian museums and galleries.
The downside is the exorbitant costs that technology adds to exhibition budgets, which are reflected in ticket prices.
“They are expensive and there will always be a race to have the latest in digital technology,” says O’Reilly.
Having seen the Pompeii exhibition when it premiered in Paris in 2020, O’Reilly says the exhibition’s visuals have been significantly superseded by other immersive exhibitions he has experienced abroad in the four years since.
“That kind of layering of experience and knowledge that a good immersive exhibition can offer can be really profound but, if the technology is old, it can disappoint some visitors, because (developments) move so quickly,” he says.
“It is a very demanding audience. Games have become incredibly high resolution. In terms of immersive content and storytelling, what we now expect when we play is a very intimate and extremely detailed experience. And museum visitors will expect the same quality.”
Do we run the risk that future generations will be unable to absorb the importance of the artifacts on display without technical dynamism?
“Maybe so, but maybe they wouldn’t go if we didn’t have that in the first place,” O’Reilly says. “What they will expect will be different from what previous generations expect.”
Or maybe not. When the Australian Museum surveyed 100 children about what they would like to see in a museum of the future, McKay says he expected “we want screens here, there and everywhere.”
“They didn’t do it. They were ‘more spiders, more sharks, more snakes’; “They wanted more of the real thing,” he says.