IDEAL Digital Arts Centre reopens its doors after eight months of renovation to present its most ambitious production to date: more than 2,000 square meters of new immersive rooms, 360-degree virtual reality, and an unprecedented sensory universe.
From November 6, this space in Poblenou will allow visitors to walk at real scale among the giants that dominated the Earth millions of years ago with the exhibition Dinosaurum, which has the support of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology. A production carried out by the cultural initiative Layers of Reality and which, according to its creators, is the largest digital experience developed on this theme internationally.
The center reopens after a technological renovation that has transformed the main immersive room, the metaverse system, and the interaction rooms. In addition, the project has allowed the incorporation of 400 square meters that until now were used strictly internally, converting them into a new 360° virtual reality room.
With this expansion, the total area of IDEAL now exceeds 2,000 square meters. It is another step in the evolution of a historic space that was inaugurated in 1917 as a popular cinema. Since then, the building has maintained its commitment to image for over a hundred years, transitioning from traditional projection to state-of-the-art immersive creation.
A meeting between paleoart and current science
Since the beginnings of modern paleontology in the 19th century, our vision of dinosaurs has been conditioned by an unknown discipline: paleoart. This craft combines illustration, sculpture, and anatomical observation and has been responsible for giving shape, volume, and skin to the fossils found underground. The successes and failures of these reconstructions have ended up influencing the icons of popular culture, fictional literature, and cinema that we all have in mind.
Dinosaurum is inspired by this historical legacy and brings it to the 21st century, using state-of-the-art digital tools to offer a new perspective. The team of digital artists from Layers of Reality takes over from generations of illustrators to give movement, dimension, and realism to the landscapes of the past.
However, to avoid falling into simplification or cinematic clichés, the exhibition has had from day one the scientific advice of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Paleontology (ICP). This collaboration has been essential to publicize the latest revelations about dinosaur biology, such as the presence of feathers in numerous theropod species, their growth rates, or new hypotheses about their mobility.
Seven spaces, virtual reality, and a complete sensory immersion
The tour through Dinosaurum has been designed as a journey through time distributed across seven different spaces. Here, sculptures coexist with the most advanced technological installations.
The visit begins by presenting the historical debate between scientific knowledge and popular imagination. The exhibition panels review the evolution of paleontology alongside a central piece: a fossil replica of a Stegosaurus over 7 meters long that allows appreciating the real proportions of this Jurassic herbivore.
The visit continues with a state-of-the-art virtual reality experience where a shared virtual world is recreated where visitors can walk with total freedom and interact with the animals. The four scenarios in this space are directly inspired by The Age of Reptiles, the mural painted in 1947 by Rudolph F. Zallinger at the Peabody Museum of Yale University; thus, a classic work of art has been transformed into a habitable adventure.
In the interactive room, the public puts themselves in the shoes of research teams through digital dynamics such as Paleomemory or the excavation simulation Fossil Rush. The room features a mapping projected onto a large three-dimensional structure representing the stratigraphy and different geological layers of the planet.
The Paleoart Studio is a space dedicated to creativity where visitors become paleoartists for a day. After painting and designing their own dinosaurs, digital scanning tools allow these creations to be integrated into a large interactive screen where they come to life and move within a digital environment.
In the immersive room, a 20-minute film, divided into four chapters, will be shown. This audiovisual journey will take the viewer from the microscopic study of fossils to ecosystems full of life, the comparison of scales between large predators, and the discovery of feathered dinosaurs.
The tour continues in the exhibition room, a space that helps to understand current fieldwork, the methodology of the latest research, and the place humans occupy in the planet's timeline. The space includes display cases with high-precision reproductions, authentic fossils, and a prominent piece: a life-size replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex head.
The tour ends in the new 400 m² room opened for this exhibition. It is a 360-degree audiovisual production where the public experiences firsthand the day when the impact of a large asteroid changed the climate and life on Earth forever.
Cinematic symphony and aromas of the past
The original soundtrack has been composed by Rafel Plana, a regular collaborator of Layers of Reality. Plana has combined the usual symphonic tradition of adventure cinema with electronic touches and ancestral instruments. To give it more emotional intensity, the music has been specially recorded by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra.
On the other hand, the collaboration between the cultural facility and the Ventós Foundation has allowed the development of a line of fragrances designed exclusively for the exhibition. Thus, the public not only sees and hears the past but will also be able to smell the vegetal, humid, and mineral space that characterized each of the three great periods of the dinosaur era: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous.