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The Return pioneers a dynamic form of storytelling. For this piece, Farrington fuses the strengths of scripted drama with new technology to animate the complex history of Tullio Lombardo’s Adam (on display in the gallery).  An actor backstage controls a digital avatar that interacts with visitors in the gallery to enliven episodes in the sculpture’s life, from its commission and meaning in the Renaissance Venice, to its movement across Europe and the Atlantic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to its damage in 202 and repair over the following years.

The innovative combination of theater with motion-capture and digital animation allows a single actor to engage with the audience and switch between characters including the biblical figure of Adam, an engineered model of the sculpture that aided its restoration, and the marble sculpture itself.