An atemporal itinerary that transforms travel into a sensory and philosophical experience. On Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 6:00 pm, in the Sala Argani of the Grande Miniera di Serbariu in Carbonia, Sardinia, the immersive digital installation “OFFICINE FAGUS” will be inaugurated — a new and prestigious production by Vox Day, open to the public until Sunday, October 18.
The project marks a profound breakthrough in Sardinia’s cultural landscape, redefining the relationship between art, memory and perception. For the first time, the Island hosts an avant-garde multimedia project capable of breaking the mould of classical artistic experience, combining the innovation of 3D virtual reality with complex anthropological and synesthetic research. This expressive language takes shape through the synergistic meeting of three authorial visions: the visual settings curated by Emanuele Bardi, the concept, texts and narration signed by Davide Catinari, and the original musical scores composed by Gionata Mirai.
The itinerary unfolds as a journey divided into as many places, conceived and represented not as inert geo-architectural settings, but as living organisms — incubators of existential trajectories and historical nodes of human evolution. Each station conveys a precise atmosphere and identity. Visitors cross the historical ghosts and cultural memory of twentieth-century Berlin, immerse themselves in the visceral, melancholic rhythms of Buenos Aires, and explore the lights and shadows of noir Los Angeles. The journey then pushes toward the vertiginous future of Shanghai’s hive-metropolis, brushes past the lysergic, free and borderland atmospheres of Tangier, beloved by the Beat Generation of William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, and rediscovers Trieste in its Central European soul as a literary crossroads of giants such as James Joyce and Italo Svevo. The itinerary finally reaches Agartha, the legendary underground kingdom of esoteric tradition, which here becomes a visual metaphor for the unconscious, the inner journey and the unexplored.
The originality of the project lies in reinventing and overturning the use of the technologies involved. Oculus Meta Quest 2 headsets and Dolby Surround 7.1 circular audio systems — until now used for video gaming or the didactic reproduction of existing museum environments — are here converted for the first time into instruments of poetic, sensory and meta-symbolic exploration. A unique experience thus comes to life through the interweaving of three-dimensional scenography, voice and sound. The digital visual settings deliver extraordinarily evocative scenarios, while the lyrical narration — entrusted to original texts and the voice of a narrative “I” that guides and transfigures optical perception — merges with the original sounds and music. The unpublished scores and experimental sound design in 360° circular audio do not merely accompany the images: they three-dimensionally envelop the spectator. The perfect synchrony between text, sound and images amplifies the emotional impact, giving life to a true dramaturgy of space built on a plot dense with cultural references, from twentieth-century literature to artistic avant-gardes, up to mythical and esoteric geography.
The title of the work recalls the celebrated Fagus Factory built in 1911 in Alfeld to a design by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, a milestone of Modernism and the conceptual premise for the birth of the Bauhaus. As Gropius himself recalled: “The Bauhaus was the manifesto, also ideological, of a way of understanding life and living it: this all-embracing design approach, capable of engaging with the multiple expressions of life, artistic and real, remains today an essential point of reference.” And the Vox Day project was born precisely from this vision. Just as the glass and steel of the Bauhaus windows replaced traditional masonry to flood interiors with light, OFFICINE FAGUS transcends the boundaries of passive vision and conventional art enjoyment, offering a concrete alternative to the homogenisation and serialisation of contemporary artistic languages.
The experience lasts approximately 50 minutes and consists of three sessions, each preceded by a brief introduction. Each slot accommodates ten people at a time, who must arrive slightly before the start of their session for booking verification.
The Officine Fagus Artistic Collective
Davide Catinari — Author, musician and cultural operator. Winner of the Premio Lunezia 1999 and Premio Mei/Pimi 2009 for his historic work with the Dorian Gray, a band with which he released seven albums and performed on international stages across Europe, China, Canada and Mexico. He writes about music for Linus, is the author of the novel White Light (2022) and director of the docufilm The Missing Boys (2023), awarded at several international independent film festivals.
Gionata Mirai — Musician, sound designer and producer. A leading figure of the Italian independent rock scene, he is the founder of Super Elastic Bubble Plastic and co-founder of Il Teatro degli Orrori. Alongside his band productions, he pursues an intense solo research project for twelve-string guitar (Allusioni, Nelle Mani) and has collaborated with artists such as Levante, Adriano Viterbini and Edda.
Emanuele Bardi — Videomapper and teacher of Music Technologies at the Liceo Musicale “S. Satta” in Nuoro. He graduated with honours in Electronic Music from the Conservatory of Cagliari and focuses his research on the intersection of visual art, 3D modelling and videomapping. He has collaborated with the Centro TiConZero for the LEM festival in Barcelona, with Spazio Musica and Vox Day, and was a prize winner at the regional contest “Azzardopatia”.
Officine Fagus is an original production of the Cooperativa Vox Day, promoted in collaboration with C.S.C. Carbonia of the Società Umanitaria, the Fabbrica del Cinema and Medianet, supported by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia — Department of Public Education, and in collaboration with the Municipality of Carbonia and the Italian Coal Culture Centre.
The project is part of the Karel Music Expo programme.
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