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Iceberg and All: Are You Ready for An Immersive Voyage on the Titanic?

"You're going to be sitting in a lifeboat, watching the Titanic helpless in the water sending out its final messages."
Image: A person watches as water floods the great hall of the Titanic
Exhibition Hub executive producer John Zaller says people can expect to experience the Titanic story as if they are onboard the ship during Titanic: An Immersive Voyage. Immersive Voyage

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The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean over a hundred years ago.  Now it will sink again, and again, and again in modern-day Denver.

Titanic: An Immersive Voyage sails into the Mile High City's Exhibition Hub on May 7, and Exhibition Hub executive producer John Zaller says people can expect to experience the Titanic story as if they were onboard the ship. "We're using room re-creations and enhanced technology overlays to place you in the story like never before," Zaller says.

Voyagers will be placed on the bridge on April 14, 1912, as they watch the ice warnings come in. They'll be in the boiler room the moment the iceberg hits the hull of the ship and water starts pouring in. "You're going to be sitting in a lifeboat, watching the Titanic helpless in the water sending out its final messages, incapable of doing anything to stop it, just like those passengers who made it to the lifeboats," Zaller says.

Through virtual reality options, participants can dive deep to the wreck site to see the Titanic's remains.
click to enlarge A replica of a bedroom onboard the Titanic.
"We're using room re-creations and enhanced technology overlays to place you in the story like never before," Zaller says.
Immersive Voyage
Why would anyone want to experience a tragic event that killed more than 1,500 people? Prior to Robert Ballard's discovery of the wreck site in 1985, people knew the Titanic story, but it was starting to enter the realm of myth, Zaller says:  "Did it really happen? How did it happen? A lot of these questions were unanswerable."

Ballard's discovery created a new wave of interest in the Titanic that has never subsided. "It helped us realize it's not just a story, but a real thing that happened and there's an actual witness to that tragedy, which is the wreck itself sitting 2.5 miles beneath the surface of the ocean," Zaller notes. "That interest continues to build year after year."

Zaller wants Immersive Voyage visitors to come away with an understanding of why the Titanic fascinates them. "We're all connected to this story in some way," he says. "It could be that we know someone who knows someone who had a distant relative on the ship. It may be that we're fascinated by naval architecture or history. At the end of the day, something is drawing you to it."

Denver has its own Titanic connection. The city was home to notable Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, whose life and legacy have been preserved by the Molly Brown House Museum;  artifacts from the Historic Denver facility will be displayed at the Immersive Voyage exhibit. "Molly Brown is such a key part of the Titanic story," Zaller says. "In a lot of ways, she is the Titanic story, and I think the Molly Brown House has done a great job keeping her legacy alive. They have a great new exhibit."

He's referring to See Justice Done, an exhibit telling the story of how Brown helped immigrant and Titanic crew survivors in the aftermath of the shipwreck. "We're excited to partner with them on Denver's unique connection to the Titanic," museum director Andrea Malcomb says of Immersive Voyage.

In addition to the museum's loaners, Immersive Voyage will include about 200 items assembled from Titanic collectors. These artifacts include pieces from the ship's construction, like the tools used to build the ship and the builder's plans. There will also be displays of the opulent artifacts relating to dining onboard. "There are beautiful pieces of crystal, silver and china all emblazoned with the White Star Line logo," Zaller says.

Artifacts from passengers who survived the wreck will be featured in a memorial gallery, "which really brings home the human element of the people's lives who were affected," Zaller adds.

Those artifacts just add to the impact of the technological elements. "When you take a story as powerful as the Titanic story and use technology that allows you to relive those moments, it creates a connection that you wouldn't otherwise have," he says. "That's the power of using that technology, to place you back in that moment of time in a way that you couldn't have conceived prior to implementing this technology."

click to enlarge A replica of the Titanic striking the iceberg
The Titanic struck an iceberg the night of April 14, 1912. More than 1,500 people died in the wreck.
Immersive Voyage
Immersive Voyage has hit a number of other cities and is currently in Hamburg and Cologne, Germany, as well as Atlanta. Titanic artifacts are carefully curated to ensure the proper representation of artifacts for each show — and yes, there are plenty of artifacts in each show. Zaller says he thought the exhibit would be a great fit for Denver because it's "a great city that loves experiences, loves culture and loves the arts."

Exhibition Hub is an international arts event company that curates, distributes and produces large immersive installations. It leases space in a former hotel that's now student housing, dubbing that space Exhibition Hub Art Center Denver for events like Immersive Voyage and Bubble Planet.

"We had a lot of visitors to our Bubble Planet experience, which is certainly more lighthearted and playful but has a very artistic element to it," Zaller says. "We want to continue to bring great experiences to Denver at our location there."

Zaller has worked on Titanic exhibitions for 25 years; he says that Immersive Voyage is the one he's most proud of because it doesn't just tell the story of the Titanic, but also broadens the lens to teach visitors about Titanic's sister ships, Olympic and Britannic; the rescue ship, Carpathia; and the body recovery ships, Minia and MacKay-Bennett.

"It puts everything in a larger context as well in terms of migration and the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy," Zaller says. "I'm very proud of this exhibit and thrilled to bring it to Denver."

Titanic: An Immersive Voyage runs May 7-July 6 at Exhibition Hub Art Center Denver, 3900 Elati Street; tickets are now on sale and range from $19-$26.