The Museum of Electrical Technology in Pavia welcomes in its prestigious spaces THE GAME. Electricity and digital revolution. An exhibition inspired by the book by Alessandro Baricco, a fascinating journey created with Scuola Holden that, from 30 September 2022 to 28 February 2023, told the last 40 years of technological evolution that have radically changed the lives of each of us.

The exhibition, curated by Carlo Berizzi and Francesco Pietra, leads between the “eras” of the digital revolution, presents the protagonists, investigates the past and relaunches towards the future of technology.

The exhibition, organized by the Museum of Electrical Technology of the University of Pavia and conceived with Scuola Holden, was sponsored by the University of Pavia, Province of Pavia and Museimpresa, and was realized in collaboration with the University Library of Pavia – mic, Amazon.it, Corriere della Sera, Rcs Documentation Centre and Ctrl+Alt Museum.

The journey starts from the Classical era (1981-1997) in which the digitization of texts, images and sounds takes place, the first PC is made and the network created. The IBM PC, the famous Commodore 64, the digital camera, the first emails, are all part of this period in which a new information circulation system is developed. Search engines are born to navigate this new world and start the first online sales.

In the era of Colonization (1999-2007) the digital is closer to everyone, social networks are created and smartphones come on the market, all innovations that allow you to stay connected with digital; open Wikipedia, YouTube but also Linkedin, MySpace and Facebook, take shape: places to share not only information and data but also our history and everyday life, we find iconic objects of our recent past such as the Kindle, the BlackBerry Quark or the first iPhone.

Finally, we arrive at the era of the Game, the years in which we are living, where everything runs fast and the distance between man and machine is reduced more and more, where technology can solve small everyday problems and reality offers us an “increased humanity”. A completely connected life, in which there is no longer distinction between the real world and the digital world, where apps like Netflix, WhatsApp, Uber, iCoud or TikTok manage a good part of our day; while apps, voice assistants, augmented and virtual reality interact, perform tasks and dialogue with humans but are just a preview of a new horizon yet to be discovered: artificial intelligence.

An extensive corpus of technological tools, graphics, newspaper articles, illustrations and a detailed time line lead to know the protagonists of this change, the key steps that have caused it and help to reflect on the revolution that has taken place in the last forty years, both with regard to everyday objects and in the society that created and made them indispensable. A video installation by the creative studio TWOSHOT animated three tables on which were placed the most iconic pieces of the different eras, making the central space of the exhibition immersive, animating the products and amplifying the connections between them. A touch screen allowed you to navigate an important selection of articles and first pages from the archive of Corriere della Sera that relate the technological evolution with the main events of recent history.

The exhibition also presented portraits of the protagonists of the Game redesigned by the artist Alessandro D’Aquila.

You could experience the Game through two paths that intertwined the history of the Museum of Electrical Technology: the Master Path extended throughout the museum, retracing the history of electricity – from the Volta battery to the Eta Beta II nuclear fusion generator – telling the inventions that led us to the Era of Game; the Explorer Path, instead, introduced directly to the Sala del Game and the story of the digital revolution, giving the opportunity to move freely around the museum and deepen the themes that most interest. You could also be guided by the Connections represented by objects from the museum collection that combine the history of electricity with that of the Game. These elements were re-read with the eyes of those who “live” in the digital world: the telegraph represents the first dematerialization of communication, the turbines tell the availability of electricity for all, The Carousel of phones the evolving towards a fast and mass connection.