Holographic theater: features of creation and use

— What is a holographic theater?

— A holographic theater is a frame structure whose task is to create the appearance of a physical structure, for example, a room or corridor, with a hologram integrated into it. A hologram is used to achieve the effect of presence. The image can be embedded in various installations of the exhibition, combined with real objects or people. The equipment must be well hidden. Neither the projection screen nor the reflecting mirror should be visible to the visitor of the exhibition.

— How is the holotheater being built?

— To create a holotheater, a special reflective film is used, which allows you to combine video or 3D objects with the real world – guests of the exhibition in fact see only it. The task of the film is to reflect the projection beam, which is directed from the screen. The screen itself and other equipment are not visible to visitors due to the properly constructed design of the theater. The holotheater can simulate a scene where, in addition to the projection itself, the participants will be people.

— What determines the quality of the holographic projection?

— There are two components here: the equipment and the content itself.

In the first case, we mean the totality of the quality of the screen that creates the projection and the holographic film. The higher the screen resolution, the higher the projection quality. But if the film on which the projection is directed is of poor quality, then the hologram will be vague, unrealistic.

The second point is the broadcast content. When creating a video or 3D object, the optical properties of the holographic system must be taken into account. So, for example, in the holotheater of the exposition “Nikolai Kuznetsov is a Man—legend” after installing the theater and launching the projection, the artist manually painted the smoke from the cigarette that the scout smoked. This was done to make the hologram look more real, with the right glow in the air. Just imagine: a low‑quality holotheater looks like you’re watching a 3D movie without special glasses.

— What holotheatres did you make?

— If we talk specifically about holographic theaters and do not take into account separately created holograms, then we have created 5 theaters at 3 exhibitions. Moreover, their roles had different exposition tasks from each other.

In the exhibition “Nikolai Kuznetsov. The Legend Man” the holotheater played a central role: Nikolai Kuznetsov himself told visitors about his amazing life. The voice spread throughout the exposition, and even if the guests did not watch the “performance”, they listened to the narration. And it subtly and harmoniously complemented the behavioral pattern of visitors to the exhibition.

For the theater, we built a “room” space, where there was a very real chair and a table, at which the projection of the hero sat down. As the broadcast content, a video was filmed where the actor played the role of the first scout, reincarnating into those images that Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov himself wore during his lifetime. We can say that it was a theater within a theater!

At the exhibition “Alexander Nevsky. The Fate of Russia” the guests were greeted by the projection of the famous Russian artist Dmitry Pevtsov. It was a virtual digest of the entire exposition, where the audience got acquainted with what awaits them further in the halls.

At the same exhibition there was another holotheater — a reconstruction of the Neva Battle. And if in the first case there was a video projection, then here the audience saw a simulated 3D reality. This theater complemented the narration of the hall, in addition to it, visitors could get acquainted with the events with the help of a comic book, which, with the help of video mapping, was located on projection screens.

For the exhibition “Not by word, but by deed” we have created two holotheatres.
One theater as an informative addition to the hall, where items for shipbuilding and a finished ship in the form of a 3D model were shown.
The second projection was the “face” of one of the halls where the Master of the iron-making workshop introduces the guests of the exhibition to his craft, which has its roots in the middle of the distant XVIII century.
All the holograms are supported by atmospheric sounds: in the first case, you can hear the cries of seagulls, the sound of sea waves and the work of the hammer of a master in shipbuilding, and in the second — the sounds of hot metal, clanking iron, grinding, in general, the feeling that you got to the factory, even it gets stuffy and hot.

— What is a holographic theater for?

— Every exhibition is a story. How to engage a visitor in the narration of a story? Yes, of course, it should be an interesting story, but then the question arises: in what form should it be presented in such a way as to captivate both adult and children’s audiences? We have found the answer for ourselves in different ways of presenting content.

The holotheater is one of the options for immersing the audience in the exhibition through real images of people and reconstructed events. This is how we “revive” the characters, establish a “dialogue” between the museum space and the viewer.