Earth: An Immersive Journey opens at ROM June 1, 2024

More than an exhibition, Earth: An Immersive Journey is a full sensory experience of nature and biodiversity. 

TORONTO, May 21, 2024 – Feel the grandeur of nature at ROM this summer with the mesmerizing exhibition Earth: An Immersive Journey. Engaging the senses of sight, sound and smell, guests will vividly experience five diverse Earth ecosystems. Running from June 1, 2024, until January 12, 2025, content for this exhibition was produced and created by Sensory Odyssey Studio and co-produced with the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris. 

Visitors will join in on a wonderous global adventure, descending through a tropical forest canopy, voyaging to lush forest ecosystems alive with darting bats, peering into hidden world of soil dwellers, roaming arid grasslands alive with insects, and venture to the remote and majestic far north. Guests will be quickly enveloped by the living world as presented in ultra-high-definition, hyper-realistic 8K-resolution video projections shot specifically for this exhibition in pristine locations across the world in 2020 and 2021. Augmented with spatial sounds and subtle scents this exhibition will create an incredible perceptual experience melding visual poetry with cutting-edge technology.

“As I conduct biodiversity research in some of the most remote corners of the world, I am confronted with how rapidly natural ecosystems are changing due to humanity’s footprint,” says Dr. Nathan Lujan, Associate Curator of Fishes and ROM’s lead curator for this exhibition. “Knowledge alone is not motivating us to take corrective action, we must feel a visceral emotional connection to these places and species to envision and manifest a new future in which they are secure. This, to me, is what Earth: An Immersive Journey is about.”

Ecosystem Section Highlights

High Up in the Canopy presents a dense tree canopy comprised of diverse tropical trees and vegetation, offering a protective home to a surprising array of jungle life including a sloth, Actaeon beetle, Amazon tree boa snake and fireflies. This section displays 360° floor-to-ceiling projections for a sense of complete immersion as animals move around and reveal their camouflaged presence. Habitats are presented through time-lapse photography showing the profuse growth of flowers and fruits, while visitors are enveloped in ambient scents of wood, lush vegetation, and ripening fruits.

On the Bat Trail takes visitors into the damp wilderness, home of the common serotine bat, an insectivorous species from temperate forest regions. Experience the life of bats among the trees and sky as perceived through echolocation, illuminating their world shaped by waves of sound and the woody scent of the forest. 

Going Underground begins a journey delving below the Earth’s surface to a world of fascinating but overlooked organisms that participate in creating life-sustaining soil, throughout a sinewy root network connecting trees, plants, and fungi. This is the temperate underground world of moles, ants, earthworms, soil mites, bacteria, protozoans, and nematodes and reveals their collective influence extending upward above the surface to benefit the sunlight gathering foliage. There, tiny animals emerge to scurry and wiggle about and protruding mushroom caps extend from their subterranean fungal mass. This hidden world of terra firma is quietly revealed through evocative sounds from underfoot, along with smells of decomposing leaves and freshly turned earth.

Grassland Insects delves into a macro view of meadow grasses that are teeming with rich and complex flora and fauna. This section reveals crawling gendarmes, aphids, beetles, praying mantis, spiders and the impressive aerial performances of butterflies, damselflies, and bees, all viewed in extreme close-ups with wafting scents of flowers, honey, and grass.

To the End of the World lands visitors into the sublime world of Greenland’s beautiful arctic landscapes.  Scattered across expanses of floating ice, drifting snow and barren rock, visitors will encounter a world populated by species adapted to the extreme conditions of coastal and offshore environments. This is the habitat of arctic foxes, seals, humpback whales, migratory birds such as dovekies and arctic terns. This foreboding and rarely visited panorama is experienced through 180° projections of wide-open arctic spaces, and the feeling of wind-swept vistas tinged with the smell of salty arctic sea breezes.

Members will have the first opportunity to attend Earth: An Immersive Journey during the Member Preview on Friday, May 31, 10 am to 5:30 pm and Saturday, June 1, 10 am to 12 pm.

Free Main Floor returns from July 2 to September 2, with ROM open seven days a week. Building the overwhelming success of previous summers, Free Main Floor returns with free access to Museum’s permanent galleries First Peoples, China and Korea, along with live performances and educational activities for kids.

ROM After Dark (RAD), the Museum’s 19+ themed after-hours event series with curated music, visual arts, pop-up performances, and distinctive food and drink, will give visitors one more great reason to attend RAD with access to Earth: An Immersive Journey included.

Admission to Earth: An Immersive Journey
Excluded from Free Main Floor are surcharged exhibitions Earth: An Immersive Journey and Wild Cats, located on Level 1. For best value visitors can take advantage of Plan Ahead Pricing when purchasing tickets online.

Image Credit: Forest ecosystem, © ArtScience Museum, 2023

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ABOUT ROM 
Opened in 1914, ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) showcases art, culture, and nature from around the world and across the ages. Today, ROM houses more than 18 million objects, from Egyptian mummies to contemporary sculpture, from meteorites to dinosaurs. ROM is the most visited museum in the country and one of the top ten museums in North America. It is also the country’s preeminent field research institute, with a diverse range of experts who help us understand the past, make sense of the present, and shape a shared future. Just as impressive is ROM’s facility—a striking combination of heritage architecture and contemporary, cutting-edge design, which marks the Museum as an iconic landmark and global cultural destination.  

We live on in what we leave behind.  

ABOUT MHNN
At the interface between science, culture and society, the Museum has been studying biological, geological and cultural diversity, as well as the relationship between humans and nature, for almost four centuries. As a research centre, museum and university, it draws on a range of incomparable disciplines, skills and knowledge that it shares with the rest of the world. As a co-producer of the Sensory Odyssey contents, the Museum provided essential expertise with more than 15 scientists involved at every stage of the project.

ABOUT SENSORY ODYSSEY STUDIO
Sensory Odyssey Studio is an edutainment exhibition company created in France in 2020 based on an idea by Gwenael Allan. We create and produce immersive multisensory art and science journeys designed to enhance the way people experience and care for the living world. 

This original Exhibition content was created by the Sensory Odyssey Studio in collaboration with Hervé BOUTTET and co-produced with the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris). Audiovisual production by Mardi8. Original Scents by IFF (exclusive international partner for the Sensory Odyssey fragrances).