(IMJ-MoB) Version II
IMMERSIVE MULTISENSORY JOURNEY INTO THE MYTH OF BABEL (IMJ-MOB)
Premiered on September 3, 2025,
at the Museum of the Future (Ars Electronica Center) in Linz, Austria
in the Deep Space 8K at the Ars Electronica Festival 2025 – “PANIC – Yes/No”
Venue
IMJ-MoB has been showcased in Deep Space 8K, an immersive venue within the Ars Electronica Center, featuring a 16×9 meter wall and 16×9 meter floor projection surface, 50 million pixels, and a high-performance laser tracking system. The Ars Electronica Center (AEC), also known as the Museum of the Future, is one of the world’s leading institutions dedicated to the intersection of art, science, and technology. The Ars Electronica Festival is among the most prestigious international events in this field, bringing together renowned authors, entrepreneurs, and multidisciplinary innovators, those who often transform emerging trends into global realities.
Project Description
IMJ-MoB (Immersive Multisensory Journey into the Myth of Babel) is a full 3D immersive audiovisual experience presented in 8K resolution. This narrative-driven work reimagines the myth of the Tower of Babel by combining generative storytelling, high-resolution imagery, and spatial sound. It explores the concepts of lost languages and layered visual structures within a dynamic, multisensory environment.
IMJ-MoB brings together gigapixel imaging, 2D and 3D compositing, immersive visual effects, and AI-driven animation to form a dynamic digital monument. Utilizing holographic acoustics and a six-layer spatial audio system, it brings ancient voices—such as those from Babylonian and Assyrian cultures—back to life. A generative narrative engine shapes visuals, sound, and symbolic choreography mixing layers that enhance emotionally powerful experience.
Presented in Deep Space 8K at the Ars Electronica Center, IMJ-MoB will be projected onto a wall and floor surface measuring 16 by 9 meters. With 50 million pixels and a high-performance laser-tracking system, this innovative venue creates a breathtaking and immersive 3D stereoscopic environment.
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NARRATIVE: Thematic Exploration – Myth Reimagined
IMJ-MoB explores symbolic themes related to language, ambition, collapse, and renewal. It merges the boundaries between the past and future, myth and technology, and reality. Through adaptive storytelling, the integration of art and science transforms digital heritage into a multisensory experience. This approach encourages reflection and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the work.
The experience encourages audiences to engage with the story of Babel not as a fixed myth, but as a dynamic, ever-evolving narrative—an exploration of human history that encompasses themes of unity, fragmentation, and the myth of eternal return.
Enduring Myth
Yet, the myth endures. It drifts through time, reshaped by each generation and refracted through the perspectives of those who dare to look. IMJ-MoB offers no answers—only echoes, fragments, and visions, for you to witness, to react, and take action.
In IMJ-MoB, Babel symbolizes both the desire for ephemeral experiences and self-destruction. It embodies the yearning to rise, understand, and unite through language and vision. This journey connects human ambition and aspiration with the tragic consequences of misguided leadership. Elements of dark humour and ridicule emphasize the cyclical devastation caused by egotistical rulers who treat Earth as a personal hellish courtyard. Driven by ambition and grotesque illusions of megalomania, these mediocre actors project their egos in a light of death.
They leave behind chaos, destruction, and the degradation of humanity, nature, and the planet itself—impacting even their own inheritance and families. Destruction, war, death, and injustice are waged for the sake of those in power, aiming to preserve their fiefdoms solely for themselves. They govern while intoxicated by their own illusions, blind to the ruin they cause. Their empires are built on bones, and their legacies are written in ash. Ultimately, these forces disgrace themselves, wasting the limited time they have. Ironically, no one leaves Earth alive—so what is the rush to bury ourselves and others in the putrid soil of cemeteries, nourishing the worms?
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“The Tower of Babel is a mythical tale that explores themes of rivalry, competition, and jealousy. It highlights human ambition and the desire for supremacy and power, along with the internal conflicts these ambitions create. Additionally, it illustrates the struggles people face against the deities they have constructed in their own image. This narrative generates a cycle of animosity, chaos, disunity, and self-destruction. The story has had a lasting influence on human behaviour, actions, and interactions throughout history, continuing to shape society even today.”Franz Fischnaller
IMJ-MoB is not related directly or indirectly to any authors or paintings created or based on Babel, classical or contemporary, but is essentially based on the concept, narrative and metaphor of Babel, in today’s apocalyptic and self-destructive time by humans against humans and against the analogue soul of our blue planet.
CREDITS
Author: Franz Fischnaller, Co-author Yesi Maharaj Singh
Development, Production Support & Coordination: DIAC (DESIGN OF IDEAS | ARCHITECT OF CULTURE)
Editing, Sound Design with special arrangement: DIAC, Steve Bryson
IMMERSIVE MULTISENSORY JOURNEY INTO THE MYTH OF BABEL
(IMJ-MOB) © Franz Fischnaller 2025 – All Rights Reserved
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the EuropIA Institute, the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF) 2025 for their support and special thanks to Diana Vicinelli Landi, AI expert at the EuropIA Institute, for her valuable collaboration on first part of the project entitled: TOWER OF BABEL IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE (TB–IGP|AE).
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Contact: yang.sue@orange.fr
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REFERENCE TO RECENT IMMERSIVE WORK
RELATED TO THE TOWER OF BABEL by Franz FISCHNALLER
Previous to the creation of IMJ-MOB, Franz Fischnaller had created the THE TOWER OF BABEL IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE (TB-IGP|AE), a 4K/3D immersive Gigapixel art experience inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1563 painting The Tower of Babel. The project premiered at the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF), held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes from February 13 to 15, 2025.
(TB-IGP|AE) Experience combines traditional art with experimental storytelling, integrating 2D and 3D graphics, digital modelling, simulation, AI-driven animation, motion graphics, and micro/macro photography. Visitors engage with the painting’s symbolic architecture and mythic figures, including Nimrod, the king of Shinar, whose image is digitally scaled to over 20 times its original size in the immersive projection. Narrative layers unfold through generative techniques and visual choreography generate an innovative aesthetic that ignites curiosity and emotional resonance.
The Tower of Babel, Bruegel’s painting, housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is one of the most iconic visual interpretations of the myth described in Genesis 11:1–9. Fischnaller’s project reimagines this mythological narrative through advanced digital media, transforming a static oil painting into a dynamic, multisensory experience. Using a high-resolution image of the artwork—measuring over one billion pixels— enables viewers to explore the painting’s intricate details at an unprecedented scale.
TB-IGP|AE is not merely a digital reproduction—it is a visionary reinterpretation of cultural heritage, merging historical depth with technological innovation. It stands as a benchmark in immersive art, redefining how audiences interact with classical works in the age of AI and gigapixel visualization. The project emphasizes themes of ambition, fragmentation, divine rivalry, and the cyclical nature of human aspiration and collapse. It invites audiences to reflect on the historical and metaphoric dimensions of Babel, while exploring Bruegel’s composition, symbolism, and storytelling through a contemporary lens.
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Further info> THE TOWER OF BABEL IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE (TB-IGP|AE)