DIGITAL PIERROT MUSEUM

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digital pierrot museum sidequest presentation

Digital Pierrot Museum is a free digital museum presenting the experience of navigating through a museum of digital and multimedia art through a virtual setting. This project is designed to give the audience a live adventure of the whole museum experience. This museum will promote digital art, contemporary art and virtual experiences. The floor plan and the architecture of the museum is devised so the audience can fully immerse in the experience, get lost, and interact. It’s an open virtual space in which multimedia artists can join our vision of making art accessible to everyone. Our goal is to promote art, technology and multimedia and to provide an open space to integrate and incorporate these mediums into the virtual experience of the museum. Using Unity Game engine to power up the museum experience, we are trying to further enhance the interactivity and the adventure of the museum for purely educational purposes. The museum offers:

Museum Origins

This project is inspired by the cycle of poems, by the Symbolist Belgian poet Albert Giraud, called Pierrot Lunaire: rondels bergamasques. In this cycle of 50 poems, he comprises the adventures of Pierrot, and with these adventures, Giraud shares valuable lessons regarding the artist and contemporary art, which are still applicable to our society. In many poems, you can see Pierrot conflicting with Cassandre. It is a beautiful symbolism, explaining the contemporary artist’s struggle with the growing vulgarity of capitalism and subsequent flight into an interior world.

To honor the cycle of poems, there were exhibited 50 digital illustrations, along with the respective poems, in the social center Termokiss in Prishtina, Kosovo in a project named Digital Pierrot Museum. The project, lasting from 10th of November until 6th of December 2018, consisted of an exhibition of these illustrations and the poems adapted in Albanian along with classical and contemporary music performances, two workshops, film screenings from local directors, a poetry slam and an audiovisual performance.

This was the first step, the physical manifestation, the museum had its official opening with the help of the amazing staff at Termokiss. Transferring the museum from Prishtina to Albania proved to be quite difficult. As a resident of Tirana, you can see that there is a severe misconception regarding contemporary art and digital media. This was further enhanced by the fact that there are no contemporary art museums in Tirana. Bearing the status of the contemporary scene in Tirana in mind, and the negative effects of COVID pandemic on culture and cultural activities, it was decided to transcribe the museum into a digital medium. Now after these turbulent years the museum is officially open and accessible for every artist to translate their mediums into a digital setting. On retrospect, having indulged virtual tours of Microsoft Encarta during founding childhood years, designing a virtual gallery experience seemed like the next logical step in the future of a contemporary artist.

The museum aims at bridging the distance of being an online tool, by bringing the experience as closer as possible to the people. Taking as a reference to the labyrinth, the museum has its core the concept of exploration as an individual experience for each visitor. Architecturally, a bigger volume is excavated creating a balance between solids and the voids. The functions are located each in a different volume. They are connected by the open space, which aside from being a connecting element, is also an interactive and exhibition space. When entering the museum, the visitor has the choice to choose their own path. By not having a precise path through the project, one can get lost inside the project and create an individual route.

Using Unity Gameplay experience, we tried to enhance the navigation through the museum and the interactivity with the environment. This strategy applies twofold, educating youth regarding art, multimedia and culture, while showing adults and parents the educative sides of videogames. The game interaction concept of the museum was designed to break the myth of videogames leading towards violence and miseducation.

"What we present to you is an unfinished museum, DPM 1.0 and we hope it never ends. We are trying to create an infinite space for all artists struggling to transcribe their expression into a virtual setting. It was designed to be a continuous project. In the vast sea of information, we have decided to occupy a small ripple in which art, technology and videogames intertwine delicately. This is why our offices are called the Ripple Offices" - By Willred Dallto, the creator of the museum.

RIPPLE TEAM

Willred Dallto – Project Leader, Art Director
Era Canaj – Project Coordinator, Art Advisor
Sendi Dhia – VR Developer, Technical Supervisor
Samuel Mema – 3D Model, Concept Design
Enisa Selmanaj – Architectural Plan, Concept Design
Donaldo Gërmenji – Troubleshooter, Developer

CONTRIBUTIONS
Sara Shqarri – Communications
Arlen Zekaj – Talent Hunt
Rezarta Skëndaj – Coordination
Andia Brahja – Communications

If you want to help us expand our ripple, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Find us on Windows and all VR Platforms at:

itch.io
Sidequest VR

We apologize in advance for the bugs and errors that might occur during your experience. We are continuously testing to optimize this experience.