Andrei Voznesensky Cultural Center

On the May 12, 2018, in the 19th century mansion located in historical center of Moscow, at Bolshaya Ordynka Street, Andrei Voznesensky Cultural Center was opened. It has become the main exhibit space and archive of the poet’s creative legacy. The project’s creators — architect Agnia Sterligova and Planet 9 bureau had designed f a multifunctional space in a way that uses multimedia installations to submerge the visitors in the unique atmosphere, reflecting the main stages of Voznesensky’s creative life. 

We were in charge of the tasks related to the Center’s technological infrastructure, such as detailed technical projects’ designs development , selection and delivery of equipment, manufacturing, assembly and installation of multimedia and interactive exhibits. We also have invited the Yarko-Yarko light design bureau to help us with the integration of proposed lighting solutions. 

The exhibition in general is centered around archival audio and visual materials that are integrated in different multimedia installations. They are augmented with projections, which showcase actors and artists reading Voznesensky’s poems that draw the poet’s legacy into artistic dialogue with modernity. By the means of light and sound design the space is organized into zones. In order to avoid sound interference integrated systems of directional sound were actively used.

Because Voznesensky’s oeuvre is text-centric, a special attention was paid to his poems. We have installed LED lines displaying texts of his poems in the entrance zone and along the staircase to the second floor, establishing a visual rhythm and dynamic of the whole location. In the interactive installation entitled ‘One Million of Red Roses’ the motion sensor activates the playback of the musical theme and scrolling of the text of the famous Russian hit song by the same name. The projection interactive installation ‘Russia, arise!’ is equipped with a speech recognition function. The visitors read aloud lines of this poem that are projected onto a wall, while specially developed by our engineers application recognizes spoken words and visually accentuates the relevant text snippet by video projection means. Simultaniously relevant parts of the sculptural composition that contains the poem’s imagery lits up. The Center also has an electronic library there the visitors can select one of Voznesensky’s compilations and study its contents on integrated displays.

The building’s hallway is equipped with a large projection surface, for which we created a special interactive application and layout templates. With the help of the content management system, the Center’s staff can design the announcements of new events and introduce the visitors to the exhibit contents with ease. Gobo projectors are used to display the poet’s videoms (animated texts) on the hallway walls.

The building’s second-floor space is multifunctional, and can be used as a movie theater, a lecture hall, or an exhibition space. It also houses the sculptural-and-light reconstruction of the poet’s study at his favorite dacha in Peredelkino. In addition to a number of original three-dimensional artistic solutions, there are several multimedia installations designed by our team.

A large number of integrated multimedia solutions helped to reduce operational costs and allowed to easily and quickly transform the Center’s environment for different types of activities — performances and presentations, movie screenings and exhibitions , making it truly multifunctional and ergonomical. The set-up also envisions a convenient and easy-to-use system of remote content management and multimedia complex control.