Concept: Even if the holocaust is one of the most exposed parts of Jews history, we would like to present an alternative of this culture.
Tree of life is an interactive tour, that takes place in the Venice ghetto and treats Jewish culture and history in a more involving and exciting way. Making people interact and learn about facts and events is the spirit of this project.

What is it: Tree of Life aims to tell visitors to the Venice Ghetto about Jewish culture and history in an interactive and ludic manner. Making people discover the history interacting with events make them enjoy the experience.

The tour is compound of three interactive installations in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo:
01 the Tree itself, a tree in the square. Activated by RFID reader, the tree introduces the tour and explains the Venetian origin of the word ‘ghetto’.
02 the interactive floor of the diaspora in the sottoportego, an arcaded porch: by standing on a ‘timeline’, the visitor activates a projection on the floor and an audio commentary, which illustrate the history of the Jewish diaspora.
03 the Cabbalah Carpet, near the square’s wellhead: by walking on the carpet’s ‘Tree of Life’ pattern, the visitor activates an audio explanation of the meaning of the Cabbalah.
This project concentrates on the interactive floor in the sottoportego.

How it works:
Tree of Life: the interactive tour can be joined at the Jewish museum in Venice, where you receive an explanation brochure,a Tcard (with RFID technology) and a bluetooth headset.

Always at the museum, with a service software, you can choose the language for your tour and the data will be save in Tcard + Bluetooth headset that you’ve receive.

Every part of the project has a RFID reader connected with the central server. Depending on the intended experience in each zone an RFID reader detects the visitor’s Tcard and sends audio to the Bluetooth headset and also to the video projection in the interactive floor experience. In the Sottoportego experience the visitor’s position on the timeline, detected by an ultrasonic range-finder, triggers the Bluetooth headset audio.

Experience: We have focus on the interactive floor of the diaspora for our prototype.
The final result of our work shows exatly how in a real stage the project would be.
A projection on the floor show the graphic of this experience, correlated with the audio,
it makes a really nice combination that takes the user to a new level.

Informations and graphics: The graphic part of the our prototype project is a simply represented map of the Europe and a timeline of most important events of the diaspora. This graphic will be on the floor of the sottoportego, which visitors interact by walking on a projected timeline.

Five different spots activate different animations, with audio via bluetooth headsets. So, walking on the timeline the user will be like the arrow of the mouse. When he stops on a number, it will trigger a video and an audio.
The animations adopted for the project are in beautifully colour contrast with the graphic of the map. A blurred white spot moving and enlarged to represent the movements of the Jews. A simply representation to give nice emotions seeing historical events.
In the image below it’s possible to see some characteristics of the graphics.

Credits: Tree of Life is a prototype developed at the IUAV University in Venice with professors Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor in collaboration with Durrel Bishop and Davide Rocchesso.
We used Processing, an ultrasonic sensor, a projector, loudspeakers for sounds, an animation, and we build a fake venetian floor.

Here is how we split the work:

Brainstorming, sketching and developing the whole project:
Benito Condemi de Felice with Pamela Moscarda.

Graphics: Pamela Moscarda.

Prototype’s problem solving: Benito Condemi de Felice with Pamela Moscarda.

Coding: Benito Condemi de Felice with Pamela Moscarda.

Floor prototype: Pamela Moscarda with Margherita Urbani.

Hacking (ultrasonic sensor): Benito Condemi de Felice.