A couple of Friday’s ago, I went to see the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit up in SF!

I had first learned of this exhibit (or at least something very similar) when it opened in France and it intrigued me immediately: take the paintings of the artist, animate them, and project them so large that it feels like you are walking into and inhabiting them in a wonderful surreal landscape.  And the exhibit very much delivers on that promise. Projected to fill the perimeter of a very large and tall square room — as well as the floor! — you’re surrounded by the colourful shifting patterns.  Sometimes the painterly strokes drew themselves into existence;  sometimes the scene was treated like a pastoral landscape marking the passage of the sun;  sometimes there were Escher-like structures that shifted kaleidoscopically, sometimes it was the petals of flowers blowing on the wind.  Needless to say, the pièce de résistance was the animated nuit étoilée sequences, with shifting aurora, shimmering water reflections, and the twinkling of the stars.

Very cool.  I stayed long enough to see the sequence several times, and it was a sweet experience every time.  While the original setup in France seems like it might have been a tad more immersive, with the projections closer at hand on large square pillars of screen throughout, this still worked great.  I recommend viewing it at least once standing near one wall near the mid-point, looking towards one of the adjacent walls.  This way, the wall you are adjacent to is in your peripheral vision, and as the images flow you really get a sense of movement.

Definitively fits the bill of delicious wonder!  While videos will never do it justice, I did take a few; click here to check them out.  And if you get a chance to see it (whether in SF or wherever it heads to next) I nudge you to do so.