Art Break

Vincent Willem Van Gogh – Immersive Experience (Seattle 2021)

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. Seattle. October 2021

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.

I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process.

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh only lived 37 years (1853-1890). His brother Theo was his closest confidant for life. Van Gogh killed himself in July 1890. His brother died of grief soon after. An amazing fact about Van Gogh is that he actually saw the world and colors in the manner he painted; never modified his style for commerce or fad…he dabbled with Japanese style for a short period before returning to his unique style—it is what and how he was.

From Van Gogh’s mother’s portrait, to postman Joseph, to the famous Starry Night, to the still life series of Sun Flowers, to the Sorrowing Old Man…his mostly crude strokes somehow convey more disposition back to the assemblage than a detailed, high-definition photograph. I experienced this first-hand looking plethora of his paintings and when combined with his words, carefully crafted sound, animation and music, I was aptly immersed in his life, thoughts, and experiences even for some fleeting moments at the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience event that’s showing in Seattle this month through January.

Here’s the official production of his Immersive Art Experience:
https://vangoghexpo.com/seattle/ if you’re interested. I personally recommend it. Some who had seen a similar show somewhere else earlier say this one is certainly different with more artwork, less narration, and more impressive visuals and auduio.
(360 deg projections. 15,000 square ft screen. VR (virtual reality)).

Here are some of my “teaser” clips from our visit in no particular order (I intentionally kept them really brief so as not to spoil it with much details). Enjoy.

Each painting projected were beautifully, meticulously, and discreetly animated.
This gives you a decent idea of the space.
About 10′ tall
Nice layout.
Conservative guess: this sculpture is around 6 from bust to head (mounted up to about 12 feet on a pedestal) and over 5 feet wide.
You have to know the context of this—only by being there.

To wrap up, right before exiting the building (through the gift shop, of course) there’s another large room where there are printed templates of his art (simplified with just black outlines on white paper) that you can color if you’re so insipired…several colors of crayons are provided. After you color it, you can “scan” it and it’ll display on a large screen in the room for others to admire (or ridicule :)), you can also stick the paper up on the walls leaving a piece of your legendary work behind for the world to appreciate. Here’s mine 🙂

And there it is on a larger screen (digitized). My son’s coloring is the landscape one (top row, 2nd from right).

Pssst! Interested in creating programmable, cool electronic gadgets? Give my newest book on Arduino a try: https://www.amazon.com/Tony-Rahman/e/B09BY6SW2P

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