Dexter Studios(206560, hereinafter ‘Dexter’) has reaffirmed its capabilities in building exhibition spaces based on immersive content by overseeing the production of digital content and the design of visitor experiences for the ‘Baekje Arts Hall’, a new landmark in South Chungcheong Province.
Opened last month in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, the Baekje Arts Hall is a multi-purpose cultural platform created to help Gongju—home to the World Heritage sites of Gongsan Fortress and the Tomb of King Muryeong—transform from a city known for its historical sites into a hub for historical and cultural content. Comprising the ‘Silk Garden’ exhibition hall, the ‘Goma Hall’ performance venue, the ‘Mureung Workshop’ experiential education space, and an art shop, it has been developed as a futuristic cultural space that goes beyond mere observation to offer direct, immersive experiences. Dexter formed a consortium with the Cultural Heritage Technology Research Institute (TRIC) and FREEDOTS to oversee the planning and production of the main content for the permanent sensory media art exhibition ‘Time Woven in Light: Baekje’, installed in ‘Silk Garden’.
‘Silk Garden’ is a key exhibition space within the Baekje Arts Hall, offering an immersive experience where visitors can fully experience the cultural heritage and artistic excellence of Baekje from 1,500 years ago through multisensory presentation. The exhibition comprises a total of eight content pieces, and Dexter was responsible for the planning and production of five of these—excluding three works by local artists—namely ▲Baekje Hyperreal ▲Source of the Senses ▲Coloured by the Senses, whilst the remaining three pieces were created by local artists.
The exhibition’s centrepiece, ‘Baekje Hyperreal’, is a large-scale immersive media installation unfolding across a curved screen measuring 18 metres in width and 3.2 metres in height. Dexter has reimagined the three currents of Baekje culture—the current of water (the Geumgang River), the current of light (science and technology), and the current of thread (textile culture)—as a single immersive experience. Utilising Unreal Engine-based real-time 3D graphics technology, the beauty of Baekje artefacts has been rendered as cinematic imagery, whilst the texture and form of the artefacts have been reproduced with hyper-realistic precision based on high-resolution data from the National Museum of Korea and the National Gongju Museum.
‘The Source of the Senses’, displayed on a massive 7-metre-high LED media wall at the entrance to the Silk Garden, is a piece of content in which Dexter has visually and auditorily reinterpreted the Geumgang River, the foundation of Baekje’s cultural currents. Within a flow where a single drop of water passes through a stream and expands into a massive waterfall, the forms of Baekje artefacts appear like ripples; through this, the historical flow of Baekje culture, which developed centred on the Geumgang River, is expressed in a majestic visual language.
Numerous experiential contents have also been produced to convey the delicate aesthetic unique to Baekje through interactive means. Dexter’s immersive content technologies were utilised, including AI-based production techniques and real-time responsive systems utilising motion tracking.
In ‘Coloured by the Senses’, when a visitor steps into the area in front of the fabric screen, the images of artefacts excavated from the Tomb of King Muryeong are embroidered stitch by stitch onto the fabric.
The weaving animation for this content was created using AI technology. The ‘Where Fragments of Memory Gather’ and ‘Footsteps Awakening the Flow of the Geumgang’ installations utilise real-time responsive systems powered by motion sensors, creating a performance where visitors can directly experience Baekje culture in response to their movements.
The ‘Silk Garden’ exhibition at the Baekje Arts Hall is a prime example of Dexter’s capabilities in producing immersive content, combining technical expertise and experiential design. It is characterised by the way each piece of content is orchestrated to form a single narrative experience. Dexter’s previous project, the immersive media art exhibition ‘Flashback : Gyerim’ in Gyeongju, which showcased the company’s capabilities in producing history and culture-based content, is also currently running to great acclaim from visitors, featuring distinctive content and narratives based on the myths and folktales of Silla.
Lee Hyun-min, Head of Dexter’s Immersive Content Division, stated, “The ‘Time Woven in Light: Baekje’ exhibition at the Baekje Arts Hall was a project that enhanced the visitor experience by organically combining various media, including large-scale LED displays, projection mapping and screen technology,” adding He added, “To produce content of the high calibre befitting Gongju City’s new cultural landmark, Dexter drew upon the full range of technical expertise and experience it has accumulated across diverse fields, including film, drama, XR content and media art.”
ⓒ Dexter Studios
