Ever heard of ‘Beeple’ (or Mike Winkelmann as his birth certificate states)? As ‘Beegle’, Winkelmann is acknowledged as a pioneer in the digital art world, with his best-known work the NFT artwork “Everyday: The First 5000 Days” selling for $69 million at Christie’s in 2021. Beegle unfamiliar, how about ‘Pak’? You could be forgiven for not knowing this anonymous digital artist, whose work also explores the boundaries of digital art and NFTs. The artist’s minimalist and geometric NFT project “The Merge” sold for $91.8 million. Like many digital artists, Beegle and Pak are making significant impacts through their unique styles and innovative approaches. But if you consider audience size the measure of success for digital art shows, it is digital reproductions of the traditional art masters that really attract the big audiences – even to digital reproductions of work in traditional media.
SET as body copy:
While the artists Beeple and Pak represent a tiny fraction of the talent engaged in the contemporary digital art world, with each bringing their distinct vision and pushing the boundaries of what digital art can achieve. But for attracting really big audiences to art, we have to turn to reproductions of well-known oil paintings. To add something extra to standard reproductions of such masterpieces. high fidelity image capture requires advanced AV technology. But that’s not all; white current visual technologies can both capture and display the fine details, textures, and colours of original artworks, new and emerging technologies can be applied to make enjoyment of the work truly immersive.
Image captureyo
Capturing high resolution “D and even 3D images id relatively straightforward with today’s technology. High-resolution digital cameras, such as those from Hasselblad or Phase One, can be used for capturing the intricate details and textures of oil paintings. These cameras can offer resolutions up to 100 megapixels or more, ensuring that even the smallest brushstrokes are visible. Gigapixel imaging involves stitching together multiple high-resolution images to create a single, extremely detailed image that can be zoomed into without losing clarity. This is particularly useful for very large paintings.
Colour accuracy is of paramount importance when creating facsimile digital versions of an iconic artwork. To this end, spectral imaging captures information across different wavelengths of light, which helps in accurately reproducing the colours of the painting. This technology can be used to create a colour profile that matches the original as closely as possible. As a further safe-guarding measure, devices such as colorimeters and spectrophotometers ensure that the colours captured by the camera and displayed on monitors are consistent with the original painting. Using multiple photographs taken from different angles, photogrammetry software can create a 3D model of the painting.
3D laser scanning provides an alternative to image capture with a camera. Scanning can capture the topography of the painting, including its texture and any raised brushstrokes or ‘impasto’. The 3D data can be combined with high-resolution images to create a detailed digital reproduction.
Choosing the right display
Having captured accurate images of the artwork an equally important consideration is the nature of the display technology. Ultra-high-definition displays are crucial for viewing digital reproductions of paintings. These monitors offer the resolution needed to see fine details and colour variations. OLED and MicroLED display technologies provide superior colour accuracy, contrast, and brightness, making them ideal for reproducing the vividness of oil paintings.
Increasingly, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are being used to supplement images of artwork. AR and VR can create immersive experiences where viewers can explore detailed reproductions of oil paintings in a virtual space. This can be especially useful for educational purposes and virtual gallery tours. For the ultimate viewing experience, holographic displays can present a 3D image of the painting, providing depth and texture that is closer to the actual experience of viewing the original artwork.
The ultimate viewing experience?
For the best results, a combination of all the above technologies is often used. For instance, high-resolution imaging combined with 3D scanning and spectral imaging can ve used to create a comprehensive digital representation of an oil painting. This digital data can then be viewed on high-quality displays or projectors to produce engaging and accurate reproductions.
Therefore. the ‘best’ AV technology for reproducing oil paintings is probably not a single technology but a combination of several, each contributing to capturing different aspects of the artwork. High-resolution cameras, spectral imaging, 3D scanning, and high-quality displays work together to ensure that reproductions are as close to the original paintings as possible in terms of detail, colour accuracy, and texture.
New shows, new venues!
As he industry for immersive cultural experiences booms, a new venue focusing on the display of large-scale digital works of art opened in London in 2022. Home to multi-sensory immersive art experiences, ‘Frameless’ will be largest purpose-built such gallery space in the UK.
Frameless is housed in a newly redeveloped tower complex in Marble Arch and will occupy a 30,000 sq. ft space across two floors. Digital renditions of works by artists including Cezanne, Kandinsky, Monet, Canaletto, Rembrandt and Klimt will be projected using 4K resolution technology across walls, floors and ceilings. The organisers of Frameless promise the experience will be “highly Instagrammable”.
Frameless Chief Executive Richard Relton says that he hopes for the venue to become: “a top-ten ticketed London attraction” – a reasonable ambition given that major digital art shows attract audiences counted in hundreds of thousands.
Van Gogh’s masterpieces made immersive with projection
One of the most successful art / AV interactions in recent years was realised by Lighthouse Immersive and Foster Entertainment in 2021. The digital recreation ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ was staged in Las Vegas. The visually striking exhibition encouraged guests to experience the works of post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh through 500,000 cubic feet of immersive projections, featuring 60,600 frames of video and 90,000,000 pixels.
The Las Vegas show was the nits ninth edition of the show, following successful, on-going and sold-out incarnations in Toronto, San Francisco, and Chicago, plus two additional productions scheduled for Los Angeles and Dallas. Two factors were immediately apparent. The ability to repeat multiples of similar events – in different locations -highlights one of the beigest benefits of digital art shows.
Unlike original oil paintings, which are generally restricted to a single, unique location, a digital representation can appear in several locations simultaneously. From a commercial perspective, where it is often free or very low coat to visit the original artwork, tickets for the digital show in Las Vegas ere sold at prices ranging from $59.99 and above. In comparison, a visit to Amsterdam’s Van Goch Museum costs 22 Euros for over 18s to see the gallery’s collection of Van Goch originals.
Aside from the medium in which the works are presented, other differences are firstly, curation and, secondly. The value added and immersive resources available to visitors. The digital exhibition not only shows off a wide range the artist’s work, while originals cannot be shown together being currently scattered across the globe. The digital show invites audiences to step inside paintings and objects evoking Van Goch’s, highly emotional and chaotic inner consciousness through art, light, music, movement, and imagination.
Featuring largescale projections that illuminate the mind of the artistic genius, the exhibition features a curated selection of images from Van Gogh’s 2,000+ lifetime catalogue of work, including Mangeurs de Pommes de Terre (The Potato Eaters, 1885), Nuit étoilée (Starry Night, 1889), Les Tournesols (Sunflowers, 1888), and La Chambre à coucher (The Bedroom, 1889). Paintings are presented how the artist first saw the scenes, based on an active life and moving landscapes turned into sharp yet sweeping brush strokes.
Visitors to the Las Vegas show enjoyed an hour-long, timed-entry, walk-through experience is designed with health and safety as a priority. Designed by Creative Director and Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi, ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ contains original, mood-setting music by Italian multimedia composer Luca Longobardi and Vittorio Guidotti as the Art Director. Siccardi immersive productions in Paris have been seen by over 2 million visitors and were featured on the Netflix TV show ‘Emily in Paris’. Co-Producer, Svetlana Dvoretsky said: “Over 200,000 guests have seen ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ Co-Producer, Corey Ross added: “Despite being unknown throughout his life, Van Gogh’s artwork has created a lasting impact through its emotional richness and simple beauty”. Following its successful US launch, ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ has had UK showings in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and the Birmingham NEC.
When Lighthouse Immersive undertook the task of reimagining an immersive exhibit highlighting the works of Van Gogh, design and build involved transforming the interior of the host location by creating a 360-degree experience for visitors. To achieve the effect, the room was fitted with projectors mapped to the walls to provide enough precision and detail to create a single, large and seamless image.
Lighthouse Immersive used 53 Panasonic PTRZ770 laser projectors across an internal network, to create a mosaic of images that come together to create a wholly immersive, 360-degree experience. By utilizing the projector’s Edge Blending and Colour Matching feature, the team was able to match the edges of the individual projectors and create large smooth and seamless images.
Lighthouse Immersive worked with the creative and artistic teams from Europe and both groups knew the goal of creating a truly immersive experience left little or no room for a lack of precision. Based on the level of precision needed – and other considerations such as energy usage, heat and durability the team agreed that laser projectors were a better solution than lamp-based alternatives.
The design called for 53 projectors to be run in tandem to create images that are 26 feet high and up to 170 feet wide across the building’s walls and columns. Ultimately, the team decided to utilize the projectors in portrait mode – as opposed to landscape – to achieve the image height in these designs. This meant finding projectors with flexible installation, superior side-shifting and edge-blending to create the desired immersive impact.
Using the Panasonic PTRZ770 projectors, the team at Lighthouse Immersive was able to maximize the shift, utilizing the 360- degree free installation feature and have the projectors at a maximum downward angle of six degrees with the projector five meters from the wall. This flexibility enables projection from virtually any angle. That is a pretty impressive amount of side-shifting considering the projectors were deployed in portrait mode.
Beyond simply side-shifting, these images needed to blend at the seams since each projector’s image is a single piece of the whole experience. With such extensive side-shifting, softer edges made it impossible to blend the separate images seamlessly and impact the overall immersion of the experience.
As valuable as the projection hardware was in making these images possible, Panasonic’s Geometry Manager Pro software allowed the team to utilize the projectors to their greatest potential. To get the images to line up perfectly, the team created a grid on the walls using 800 pieces of tape. Utilizing the projector management software, they were able to adjust the edges of the image wirelessly using a laptop to achieve the precision needed to create the effect of a single image.
When the Lighthouse Immersive team undertook this project, they had no idea what lay ahead in terms of coronavirus and the impact it would have on the entire world. What they wound up offering was an opportunity to escape from these unprecedented times by getting lost inside the artwork of Van Gogh.
