“Brehms Welt” is a permanent exhibition about two eminent German naturalists, Christian Ludwig Brehm and his son Alfred. Set in the historical Brehms’ house in Renthedorf, their hometown in Thuringen, the museum illustrates their contributions to animal observation and understanding, with a range of exhibits that goes from vintage stuffed animals to modern-day multimedia. Of course, I was in charge for the latter…even though I realized that animal stuffers were already doing “museum multimedia” hundreds of years ago!
Active in the nineteenth century, the Brehms had the traits of what we could call “scientific promoters” or “popularizers”, as they managed to tell animals’ behaviors in a very vivid form, with humanizing touches that rendered their portraits pretty entertaining. Today their texts (especially Alfred Brehm’s) still sound engaging, though sometimes unintentionally comic, when they’re clearly going against scientific neutrality. To stage a double-sided approach to this material, we recurred to an old trick: the Pepper’s Ghost.
By looking into fake mirrors, the visitors have the chance to meet the ghost of Alfred Brehm, which is an actor that theatrically emerges from the looking glass and virtually steps into the room, proudly going over the scientist’s work, telling anecdotes and sometimes conceding he may have gone a bit too far. The Pepper’s Ghosts, a staple in beier+wellach concepts, are here very effective. The technique relies on a clever combination of special mirrors and projections and even though it can evoke a sort of hologram, was actually conceived in Brehm’s times. I did the camera work with the actor and the necessary post-production for the projection.
Some original furniture and decoration of the house still exist, and is included in the exhibition. In the room about “Tierleben”, Alfred Brehm’s best-seller, different museological practices coexist, we have his original library (put symbolically on a pedestal), a modern glass display with different editions of the book, and a touchmonitor, in which I put simple animations based on illustrations from the first prints. Again, the voice of Brehm is present, it accompanies the animations but it’s actually present throughout the house with different means (the ghosts, interactive drawers with hidden speakers, regular earphones).
An imposing five-monitor station lets the visitor navigate through Brehm’s aural word, by touching on different animals and triggering related quotes from his texts. I programmed the station with a minimal GUI and elegant zoom-in movements that focused on the animal being portrayed.
All in all, a very nice exhibition: unexpectedly amusing material to work on (I laughed on Brehm’s utter hate of hamsters, “malicious creatures” always getting devilish descriptions), fascinating and challenging work conditions given we were in a historical house, and interesting cohabitation of museological techniques, from ancient “Wunderkammer” to contemporary style.
CREDITS
Curation: Brehm-Gedenkstätte Renthendorf (Jochen Süss, director)
Exhibition design, graphic and media concept: beier+wellach
Exhibition production: id3d-berlin
Media production: Michele Pedrazzi, with Andreas Karaoulanis
Fun fact: in the interactive medias, Christian Ludwig Brehm speaks too, and he was given the voice of popular TV actor Dietmar Bär (“Tatort”).
But it was Jan Andreesen that got the chance to embody Alfred Brehm, with beard and all, and he delivered a really spirited performance.
