To enhance the theme of emotions in sport in an accessible and engaging way for diverse audiences, equipping the museum with a tool capable of increasing interactivity and empathy while attracting new visitors, particularly young people and schools.
Emotions in Olimpic Sports
Trento Historical Museum
Target
Museum visitors, schools, families, sports enthusiasts
Project TypeArtificial Intelligence, Interaction Design, Multimedia Display
ScopeCulture and Education
Overview
An AI-based interactive installation capable of recognizing visitors’ facial expressions and connecting them to thematic content, creating an emotional, immersive, and personalized experience.
Challenge
To enhance the theme of emotions in sport in an accessible and engaging way for diverse audiences, equipping the museum with a tool capable of increasing interactivity and empathy while attracting new visitors, particularly young people and schools.
To enhance the theme of emotions in sport in an accessible and engaging way for diverse audiences, equipping the museum with a tool capable of increasing interactivity and empathy while attracting new visitors, particularly young people and schools.
Solution
An interactive station based on facial recognition technology that turns the visitor into the protagonist: they choose an emotion, replicate it with their face, and instantly discover a gallery of athletes experiencing the same emotional state.
The project
“Emotions in Olimpic Sport” transforms the visit to the Gallerie di Trento into an immersive and interactive experience designed to actively engage visitors and enhance the exhibition journey. The installation detects the user’s presence, proposes an emotion, and once correctly replicated, displays a gallery of athletes sharing the same emotional state along with historical insights.
In this way, the museum delivers an immediate and memorable experience that increases engagement, supports educational activities for schools and groups, fosters emotional awareness, and makes the visit enjoyable, empathetic, and easily shareable.
A fully modular technology that allows the museum to update content or transform the station into different experiences while maintaining the same AI engine.
Inside the experience
The visitor does not just observe: they participate.
As they approach the station, the system detects them and invites them to “perform” an emotion. When the AI recognizes the correct expression, the screen transforms into an emotional window displaying athletes experiencing that same feeling. The technology creates a powerful bridge between personal experience and sports heritage, demonstrating how emotions are universal, shared, and recognizable.
About the design
An experience designed to be:
- Natural and intuitive: the AI responds in real time to facial expressions, with no need to touch anything.
- Scalable and modular: content and interactive flows can be updated for any museum or exhibition.
- Visually engaging: a curated gallery of images and content that tells the story of emotions through sport.
- Technologically robust: facial recognition system, backend for content updates, interaction monitoring, logging of recognized emotions — a sort of technical “diary” of everything happening within the system, useful both for visitor behavior analysis and maintenance.
Much more than an installation: it is an AI-based emotional platform — flexible and adaptable — designed to bring interactive, inclusive, and customizable experiences into museum spaces.