Interactive technology that helps share a masterpiece with the world
2016 was the year of Jheronimus Bosch. All his paintings came together at the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center in Den Bosch. Everything, except for his most memorable work: the Garden of Earthly Delights. The Prado national art museum in Madrid would not part with it for the special exposition.
So, public broadcaster NTR decided to develop an interactive documentary about the triptych altarpieces together with Q42 and design agency Fabrique. The documentary is part of the 'transmedial triptych' about the painter directed by Pieter van Huystee.
Online storytelling on steroids
'Jheronimus Bosch, the Garden of Earthly Delights' takes you on an audiovisual journey through the world of Jeroen Bosch'. You can take the guided tour, but you can also decide to follow your own path at any time. Or to just wander around.
While moving through the painting the music changes depending on where you are. This music was specially composed for this project. Every detail has it's own sounds and gives you more information about the scene, by reading or by listening. The narrators Midas Dekkers and Redmond o'Hanlon share all the wondrous details with you. As does Nienke de La Rive Box, who narrated the special Klokhuis-tour for children. An absolute must see for the whole family. We also learned a lot from it!
Three shutters, dozens of stories
Cutting edge tech
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a massive work containing countless details. To enable us to fully enjoy these wondrous details, we have developed Micrio, technology to enable easy and smooth viewing of huge images online. Micrio cuts the image sized over 8 gigapixels into small pieces at different zoom levels. Therefore you do not have to wait for that huge file to load. You only get the pieces in the resolution you need, whether you're interacting via your mobile, tablet, laptop or Smart TV. And when you zoom in or move aside, the required pieces are quickly loaded in. It even has a predictive logic that smartly loads in where you might go next. In short, smart technology in service of end user experience.
This is the internet we were promised
The goal of NTW was to get 100,000 unique visitors to the interactive documentary within one year. That goal was reached within a month. And after a year they reached more than a million unique visitors!
More importantly was the enthusiasm with which the interactive documentary was received. "This is the internet we were promised," said Colossal. It reached the Reddit frontpage, received a SpinAward, a European Design Award, won the Cross Media Award Innovation of the Year, a Dutch Interactive Award and was finally crowned with a Webby!
This shower of praise did not go unnoticed by 'De Wereld Draait Door', a dutch evening talk show. Jasper was allowed to come on the show and explain what was so special about this interactive documentary. Take a look at how he got Netherland's most talkative host to be quiet for a while.
Experience it yourself
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More Micrio
Micrio is used in more and more projects, such as: