The Sun Stone Theatre
An absolute highlight of the spectacular exhibition about the Aztecs is the Sun Stone theatre. An immersive audiovisual show combining 3D video mapping animation with real objects. The Sun Stone is the most famous Aztec artwork and a national treasure of contemporary Mexico. It is a huge, round stone with intricately carved figures, languages and symbols, representing the story of the birth and destruction of our world, and the Gods who gave their lives to recreate it for us humans. To bring these complicated, hidden stories to life, we projected an animation of the surface of the stone, telling the beautiful stories with great detail, drama and effect. The animation was based on a 3D model of the stone, so the animation and stone blend together to give the suggestion that the stone itself is moving. Large projections left and right from the stone fill in the stories.
The installation has several goals:
• Give visitors a basic understanding of how religion and cosmology are connected to the daily lives of the Aztecs
• Immerse visitors in beautiful and engrossing stories full of drama and suspense
• Explain the importance of the concept of sacrifice as a means of giving life
• Introduce the large Aztec pantheon of gods
The exhibition
Towering warriors carved in stone, mythical human-animal figures in pottery, refined gold jewellery, complete offerings, fascinating drawings in codices; everything enlivened with special stories and based on the latest scientific research: these are the ingredients of this exhibition.
The exhibition aims to give a new perspective on the iconic Aztec culture. There are many clichés and exaggerations about the 16th-century Aztecs, which are based on Spanish colonial sources that were meant to dehumanize and demonize the Aztecs. This exhibition tries to tell the story from the Aztec perspective, which is never done before. For example, we incorporate contemporary voices in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, still spoken by over 1 million Mexicans.
