- This event has passed.
The history of the Fabric neighborhood, told through dance steps and state-of-the-art technologies, by the digital culture project Spotlight Heritage
13 September 2022
Every story of a person is a story of a city – because a city is not just about buildings and sights, facades and stained glass windows or a good photo spot. A city means the stories of each of us, it means childhoods, emotions, loves and bonds built in the bricks and pages of our lives.
The multiple stories of Timișoara through the prism of worlds, destinies and pluricultural voices, were discovered, by the Timișoara public, in a dance performance, with the use of digital technology and elements of augmented reality which managed to recreate the atmosphere of the Fabric neighborhood of yesteryear - an atmosphere that was also transposed with the help of the latest generation technologies.
The show was made by the Magnum Team Sports Dance Club, in collaboration with the Politehnica University of Timișoara and the National Museum of Banat and is part of the series of events dedicated to the cultural program Timișoara European Cultural Capital 2023, held within the project "Spotlighting Timisoara's Heritage through Dance / Discover Timișoara's heritage through dance steps", project co-financed by the Timișoara City Hall through the Project Center.
Ancient history explored using today's technology
The second dance show among the four events that explores, neighborhood by neighborhood, the memory and stories of Timișoara's past and present residents, wanting to highlight the city's cultural heritage, took place on Monday, September 12, in the Regina Maria Park and brought the effervescence of the Fabric neighbourhood, under the spotlight, with a female character at its center - Else Kornis (1889 - 1983), a Jewish woman born in Prague, poet, writer, translator, who had close ties with the artistic life of Timisoara from those times.
The show was inspired by the exhibition „Fabric Neighborhood - Worlds in Destinies”, organized by the National Museum of Banat and the Politehnica University of Timișoara in 2021, which includes the personal histories of Fabric residents, interviewed by the team led by Prof. Univ. Dr. Smaranda Vultur, coordinator of the Oral History and Cultural Anthropology Group.
The original aspect was provided by the use of digital technology and elements of augmented reality, elements created by Timișoara’s Polytechnic University students, involved in the "Spotlight Heritage Timișoara" project.
The next show will take place on October 21, 2022, in the Elisabetin Neighbourhood.
The city – a chapter in our life
What makes this show very special is the initiative of the organizers to create an interaction with the citizens and to connect the ancient history of the city with the people of today. Every spectator was invited to participate in a game made by the Spotlight Heritage Timișoara team. They had to recognize visual elements from Timișoara's past, finding out what those places used to look like, places where they live their personal story today. At the end of the game, the participants received prizes that will remind them of the project and this experience.
Community engagement and technology-enhanced experiences in Timisoara neighborhoods
This event represented the implementation team's desire to innovate the way a city's history and built heritage are presented to the general public in an artistic, dynamic manner, so as to facilitate cultural awareness and education, especially of younger generations.
Through this show, Politehnica University of Timișoara, in partnership with The National Museum of Banat and the Magnum Sports Dance Club Association, wanted to promote and capitalize on the material cultural heritage of Timișoara through the artistic and digital augmentation of the stories and historical buildings in the Fabric neighborhood, putting value on multiculturalism, the diversity of ethnicities, architectural styles and historical paths, offering stories that deserve to be perpetuated and artistically valued.
The following events within the project will take place in the Elisabetin and Cetate neighborhoods. Thus, in each of the 4 historical neighborhoods captured by the Spotlight Heritage project, using information about their representative buildings or building complexes, with squares and parks - audio/visual and choreographic stories will be presented or danced, that transpose history, architecture, lifestyle, personalities or common people, past and present communities.
The dance performance recorded in an AR multimedia experience can be viewed here: