The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) multimedia “Viaje Fantástico” (“Fantastic Voyage”) show will open in the Aldea Digital Telcel-GLTE Infinitum (Digital Village) in Mexico City’s Zócalo Tuesday, July 19.
Including surround sound, a projection on a 240-degree screen and puppets, the Fantastic Voyage creates an immersive experience into natural areas in Mexico. Viewers are taken to see jaguars on the Yucatan peninsula, where over half of Mexico’s 4,000 jaguars reside, monarch butterflies in Michoacán and white sharks in the Sea of Cortés. The show is narrated by actors Bruno Bichir, Fernanda Tapia, Diego de Erice and Alfonso Dosal.
The Fantastic Voyage is a fun experience for children and adults alike, but the organizers strive to go deeper than entertainment to educate viewers about the importance of conservation.
“It’s really important for us in the WWF to be able to spread this message of conservation,” said WWF coordinator María José Villanueva. “We are at a critical point in history, and we urgently need to inform ourselves and get inspired, because Mexico is our heritage and we need to protect it.”
The Digital Village, now in its fourth consecutive year, is an annual digital inclusion event funded by Telmex and the Carlos Slim Foundation. It has held the Guinness Book of World Records title for “largest digital inclusion event in the world” since its first run in 2013.
As part of the Carlos Slim Foundation’s Digital Culture and Education Program, the Digital Village seeks to promote digital knowledge in Mexico and to close the digital gap.
Visitors to the Digital Village, which is hosted in a tent city in Mexico City’s Zócalo, will have access to more than 5,000 computers and tablets with 100 gigabits-per-second connectivity on a 4GLTE network to experience content related to education, technology and entrepreneurship.
More than 80 speakers will give lectures, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and former NASA astronaut José Hernández.
Several events in the Digital Village have a focus on climate change and the ways that digital technology can be used to protect the environment, which is a central concern of the Carlos Slim Foundation. Through the Fantastic Voyage, the WWF hopes to direct some of the energy generated at the Digital Village towards conservation.
“With the Fantastic Voyage, we’re trying to create a community with the people who come to the Digital Village,” said Jorge Rickards, rural program director for the WWF. “We also want the people who come to understand that we are all part of the solution for protecting animals and their natural habitats. Mexico is the country with the fourth-most biodiversity in the world, which has always aroused extraordinary fantasies in many people. Now, we’re using these fantasies to call people to conservation.”
