The European project Urban Travel Machines brought together three art universities, forty-five visual arts students and fifteen poetry performers from across Europe, with the visionary aim of renewing the literary sector through immersive technology. By merging slam poetry with 360° video-mapping inside planetariums, the project explored new ways of engaging audiences and expanding the possibilities of poetic performance.
The performance was built on Radici, a poem by Eleonora Fisco, which explores the fragile boundary between dialogue and conflict in the choices of those who remain in marginal or depopulating places—such as her native Sicilian town—and those who leave in search of opportunity, while facing the practical and emotional weight of voluntary exile.
In collaboration with students from Aalto University in Helsinki, Radici was translated into an immersive environment.For the performances at the Tartu Planetarium (Estonia) as part of the Prima Vista Festival and at the Brussels Planetarium during the Brussels Poetry Festival, the work evolved into a 360° animation projected inside the dome, enhanced by a generative soundscape created from migration data, adding an autonomous yet thematically resonant layer to the performance.
An accompanying zine/poster combined riso-printed stills from the animation with the bilingual text of Radici, offering audiences a tangible extension of the immersive poetic journey.
https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/urban-travel-machines-cosmos-met-poetry
Janna Beck, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp — AP University College of Applied Sciences and Arts
Philip Meersman, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp — AP University College of Applied Sciences and Arts
Olga Wroniewicz, Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw, Poland
Tarja Nieminen, Aalto University / School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Eleonora Fisco, – text and performance
Milja Komulainen – concept, zine, animation
Noa Joulin – animation
Liisi Soroush – soundscape
The performance was built on Radici, a poem by Eleonora Fisco, which explores the fragile boundary between dialogue and conflict in the choices of those who remain in marginal or depopulating places—such as her native Sicilian town—and those who leave in search of opportunity, while facing the practical and emotional weight of voluntary exile.
In collaboration with students from Aalto University in Helsinki, Radici was translated into an immersive environment.For the performances at the Tartu Planetarium (Estonia) as part of the Prima Vista Festival and at the Brussels Planetarium during the Brussels Poetry Festival, the work evolved into a 360° animation projected inside the dome, enhanced by a generative soundscape created from migration data, adding an autonomous yet thematically resonant layer to the performance.
An accompanying zine/poster combined riso-printed stills from the animation with the bilingual text of Radici, offering audiences a tangible extension of the immersive poetic journey.
https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/urban-travel-machines-cosmos-met-poetry
Project initiators
Janna Beck, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp — AP University College of Applied Sciences and Arts
Philip Meersman, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp — AP University College of Applied Sciences and Arts
Olga Wroniewicz, Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw, Poland
Tarja Nieminen, Aalto University / School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Artists
Eleonora Fisco, – text and performance
Milja Komulainen – concept, zine, animation
Noa Joulin – animation
Liisi Soroush – soundscape