This is a powerful, evocative and at times mind-blowing exhibit/artwork/set of immersive environments. It advances the audio-visual vocabulary of art, animation and musical narrative considerably, while also popularizing new tools and frameworks for artistic expression and group sharing.
I liked a LOT of things about this show, and a lot of things about what we want to do in Discover-Arts remain open to further exploration.
What I liked included (in no particular order):
1. The immersive environment is well designed, in 3 huge rooms, two of which have reflective rods, polygon ‘formations’ and other mirrors throughout, to enhance and extend the audiovisual experience (and also contribute to the healthy sense of physical/visual disorientation that is intended, to take people out of their perception of distance and separateness from the art). People are themselves objects in the exhibit, as they are washed in color, too. The movies flow to and through each other, across the walls, the room, and move in multiple directions. The best human analogue I can think of for this experience is that of being inside Vincent’s head – which was the intention, I’m sure.
2. The choice of images to animate, how to animate and merge them, was very carefully crafted. There was a story behind the entire show, and many images of landscapes, buildings and rooms, skies, and people are woven together in the animation. There is NO spoken word, the animations and music tell the whole tale.
3. The energy in the paintings is celebrated in new and powerful ways through full-size animations – of flowers, trees, skies, objects, people. One whole piece has the reapers’ brilliant yellow sun rising, moving across the screen, and setting in a slow motion across the entire large (50 to 100 feet long) room.
4. The choice of music to accompany the segments was also great – Samuel Barber’s Adagio, a couple Bach pieces, some less known original pieces, tastefully arranged for impact but not drawing excessive attention to themselves (the sparkling Gates of Kiev finale notwithstanding). Music is not structurally married to the artworks here (see ‘evolutionary opportunities’ below), but adds to the emotional thrust of all the pieces really well.
5. The underlying focus of the set of tableaux IS Van Gogh’s deteriorating mental state, but that’s handled with extraordinary compassion and intelligence while still not pulling punches (there IS a death scene complete with a wall full of blood at one point, again done artistically such that I didn’t realize what it was until later!) There are haunting scenes where one is shown multiple competing self-portraits in a way that expresses the manifold moods and roles in his life. One emerges feeling one knows Vincent a bit better.
6. There are some sections that truly ‘dance’ – the stars rippling across the sky and water, trips across the countryside, the sunflowers blazing in the sun, and the explosion of blues as the irises bloom and rise in front of the audience. There is truly an aesthetic intelligence going on here. So exciting, empowering and inspiring to participate in.
Here are some evolutionary opportunities for growth of the omni-media approach:
1. The music can be deeply and continuously focused on the structures, colors, shapes, moods, etc. of the art work, and of how it is being animated. When the music is an inherent partner in the art structures a new order and perception emerges. One is no longer being asked to make a synesthetic association between a separate work of music and work of art, rather one starts to experience them as coming from one set of gestures and creating a unity of form.
2. The animations can more closely reflect and expand on the aesthetic forms and gestures of the painting. So much of interpretation of Van Gogh is centered on interpreting his inner states — hard to do with SANE people, and with Vincent it’s just making ones’ own judgments about what the paintings mean based on someone whose mind was itself a living kaleidoscope with multiple fractured panes. The paintings have their own INNER meaning, that can be brought out if/when the focus is there. There is still room for a lot more carefully crafted motions, colorations, pans, highlights, whatever helps the art work speak, and music to accompany the same.
Also note that art has no inherent meaning, even for the composer/creator that’s an ever-shifting thing. So the idea is to bring out expressive gestures to better led audiences experience the work however they are moved. Trying to say what a work is ABOUT is inherently biased and limits the much vaster frame of experiential possibilities the millions of other humans might contribute.
3. The whole approach to experiencing art can be quieter, more meditative, less frantic. The immersive Van Gogh is intentionally grand and on a grand scale, but it’s also reflecting the ADD, quick-paced world of arts & entertainment we live in. To activate some of the deeper, more internalized and personal energies that are activated by the arts, people need to be welcomed into a reflective mode of thought, one sensitized to subtle movements and changes, one that is emotionally open to hearing/seeing new information, not rushing to judgment and association (and thus remaining on the superficial level of perception). There are ways to leverage movement, synthetic gestures, tell stories, that invite the viewer/listener to a deeper partnership in the creation of meanings and understandings that emerge.
For example, when in a museum there is very little talking – people come to absorb, to reflect. Somewhere between standing quietly and looking at a small framed work of art, and the massive, busy and saturated walls of Immersive Van Gogh is a medium where reflection, motion and Wonder are all in balanced supply.
4. The viewers can have choices about how to tailor their experience. An art work doesn’t have to either just sit there or wash over you like a film. There can be simple but powerful ways to zoom in and about an artwork, OR between the various levels of psychic perception that occur when we are in an aesthetic frame of mind. Exposing these, helping people navigate them in ways that build their own perceptive vocabulary and ‘listening/watching muscles’, as it were, is a key part of the D-A vision.
5. Finally, seeing the immersive exhibit drives home the point that artworks can themselves be used to drive new models and methods for MUSICAL expression. What if you composed music strictly on the energies and structures of the art work? You’d start from different premises than just ‘jazz’ or ‘composition’, you might end up with something entirely new. Time to stop dreaming about this and start SCHEMING it up!