The Home Exchanger

— One Night in Each Museum

From the Tate Gallery to the Museum of Islamic Art, from the Thyssen to the Louvre, from the Egyptians to Raphael. To satisfy our longing for art and culture we do not need to wait for the museums to reopen. Most of the most famous art collections around the world can be visited thanks to sophisticated virtual 360 tours, guided and not. Artworks, but also concerts, nature for the whole family. And, while the roast cooks, mum and dad can enjoy the Carmen from Sidney’s Opera House.

Or even better, while mum hangs out the laundry, children can play with baby elephants in the Sabi Sand Reserve. Of course, we all know that first-hand experience is something else, yet there are strictly virtual privileges that should not be underestimated. The zoom, for example, which allows us to see the smallest details of a painting or to enter directly into the jaws of a lion, as we have never done before. And who knows, maybe technology will be able to bring us closer to art, history and nature as no guide has ever managed to.

— Motion Graphics, Typography and Archival Images

People can no longer go around in the real world, neither on foot nor with the steady-cam. Film directors are on the couch watching Netflix, and productions are all postponed until a later date. Yet visual communication is not giving up. It simply reinvents itself, or rather, exploits and maximizes all those alternative resources and methods that know how to move independently of real life.

“Space Selfie” by Samsung, “Find Your Connection” by Google and The Guardian’s “Margaret” were entirely created from a home desk, with no live footage. And these are but a few examples of how animations, illustrations, CGI, VFX, motion graphics, compositing, archival images and video clips generated by users represent a new way of making communication, filled with research and talent, that changes the aesthetic coordinates of our visual spectrum without giving up neither creativity nor quality.

— You Are All Invited to My Place

True, I can’t go to dinner in my favourite restaurant. But when does it happen that I can “invite” a starred chef to my house and cook step by step with him? And not only him. Thanks to platforms such as Zoom, Teams and Google Meets, which in this period have become our lights in the night there is space for everyone in my house.

Smart Working, of course, but also Smart FreeTime. From the Balinese yoga teacher with whom I meet every morning to greet the sun, to the master baker who teaches me how to bake sourdough bread. There is no doubt, in these weeks we are all becoming e-learning champions, every day we experience new hobbies and skills, capable of keeping us busy in these never-ending days, and making us a little more self-sufficient. Who knows, maybe this much-desired freedom also needs to go through acquiring new skills. After all, Epicurus already said, ” freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency.”