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When you walk into the main exhibition hall at Infinity des Lumières the first thing that strikes you is how expansive it is. With 2,700 m2 and 3,200 m2 of projectable surface it is an impressively huge canvas; a space that in its vastness, in its infinity, reflects a wonderful sense of freedom - you are free to move, to explore, to jump right into the world of great artists, into their hearts, minds and souls.

 

The Van Gogh immersive exhibition is an amazing opportunity to do just that.

 

When the Van Gogh exhibition starts that's when this huge canvas really comes to life. Starts showing you what it can do, all the limitless possibilities, all the new perspectives, all the new and exciting ways to experience the world of this creative genius - one of the biggest of all time.

 

But not in the way you would in a classic museum, when viewing original artwork.

 

In a classic museum, our view of a painting is confined to the canvas. There is a clear separation between us and the canvas, between each of the canvases, and between us and the painter. There is also a stark separation between the canvas and the rest of the museum space - white walls surround the canvases, each are viewed individually, at the same height, and our perspective of them is always the same - we view them en face. The experience is static, in that the canvases are static, and our movements within a classic museum are also, for the most part, pre-determined, ordered, limited. The emphasis is on seeing. Seeing in a particular way.

This is not to say that our experience in a classical museum is less. It is to say that our experience in a classic museum has its unique dimensions, which are different from the dimensions and perspectives offered by immersive digital art exhibitions.

 

Because an immersive digital art exhibition is a completely different, unique, multi-sensory experience in the truest sense.

 

Like an opera, where many elements are combined to create incredible grandeur, an immersive exhibition is a fantastic symphony of elements that come together to create intense and intimate moments. Van Gogh's glum interiors in the villages of his native Netherlands, the portraits of exhausted peasants, the vibrant streets of Paris and the magnificent fields and skies of Provence are all supersized and etched in pixels by lasers - 130 laser projectors and 58 spatialized sound speakers animating a static canvas and transforming it into art that pulsates with life.

 

The effect is incredible.

 

It is infinitely dynamic. Everything, in all the images, moves. Nothing is static.

Images change, elements move, grow, shrink, covering all the walls, doors and floors. The wheat stalks of Provence sway with the breeze, the brilliant sky shimmers with such luminosity, the sun traverses the walls, black crows fly into the sky, and the night swirls with a myriad twinkling stars.

 

There is a seamless continuity between images, as they morph into each other, with no clear distinctions and breaks. A night scene of windmills changes into day, the French countryside fades into cafe interiors, the inside of the asylum at Saint-Remy transforms into rocky ground and elongated cypresses.

 

As the images change and morph in scale, so we go from a close-up of Van Gogh's iconic portrait to vast panoramic scenes - and with each change we are transformed ourselves.

 

In an immersive exhibition, as opposed to a classic museum exhibition, our role is different - we, the people, are the central element, we are part of the exhibition. The immersive experience deconstructs the work of Van Gogh so that we can see in extreme detail the skill and energy this great artist put into every brush stroke, into each spot of paint, into each scrape of the palette knife. In this kind of immersive exhibition, we are closer to the artist, to how Van Gogh felt in relation to his own work, his canvases - he was consumed by them, he felt they were as encompassing as the scenes he painted. We are thus consumed by them, encompassed and cocooned.

 

The projections around us, giant, blown-up and super-sized, and so infinitely detailed, can make us feel as though we are tiny - small enough to live inside the brush strokes, to feel the intensity of the artist's emotions coursing through everything. Viewing Van Gogh's iconic sunflowers enlarged two-hundred times its original dimensions we feel subsumed by the symphony of yellow and blue colors, swimming in its hues and iterations.

 

Then the scale changes, we grow big again - the farmers become our friends, we feel united with the townspeople Van Gogh painted, we feel as though we can sit down and have a drink with the people walking the streets of Paris.

Our perspective, our scale, our size, our gaze has shifted again. And it will keep shifting - a kind of Alice in Wonderland experience, where each transition is a portal to a new dimension. A new dimension where we continue to discover, where we encounter new worlds of seeing and feeling.

 

The experience is fun. There is a big "wow" factor to it. It's inspiring and entertaining, for everyone. Because everyone is included. We are all part of the performance, and our movements give a certain drama to the show, a spontaneity, and also freshness. We can float through the large, rectangular space, changing positions, perspectives, even height. We can stand, sit, walk, lie down. The mezzanine level gives a great view and a totally different perspective of the exhibition. There are kids trying to swim on the floor, in all the pink, purple, yellow and blue colors of Van Gogh's sea.

And it's not just our perspectives that change because of this freedom of movement and all-encompassing dynamics, it's also because the figures of other visitors become part of the performance. We become a group that participates together in a spontaneous choreography, we are united in a transformative experience that does not separate us from our fellow visitors. 

Many people come to Infinity des Lumières repeatedly, or stay for several shows consecutively, because each time you immerse yourself in the exhibition it's a different experience. There is so much to take in, so much to experience, so much freedom.

There are 163 images in the Van Gogh exhibition, set to a soundtrack of 15 music compositions. It took 1,600 hours of work to produce the 35 minute show, and a team of 10 professionals, led by Gianfranco Iannuzzi - renowned digital artists and Creative Director of Immersive Art Exhibitions.

 

VAN GOGH'S GENIUS BROUGHT TO LIFE

 

Artistic director - Gianfranco Iannuzzi

Gianfranco creates immersive spaces and digital exhibitions, as well as providing cultural and artistic restoration service for diverse places. His work is based on images, sound, and lighting, used as sensory communication media.

Co-production - Renato Gatto

Renato is a drama teacher and an assistant stage director. He participates in the educational project at the Gran Teatro La Fenice, in Venice, and runs the Accademia Teatrale Veneta, where he also teaches vocal technique.

Video animation - Massimiliano Siccardi

Massimiliano is a video maker and multimedia artist, a researcher and producer in new technologies for installations and shows. He integrates animated images into artistic and theatrical performances.

 

 

Composition & musical arrangement - Luca Longobardi

Luca is a pianist and a composer, creating mainly music for contemporary dance, artistic performances and multimedia installations. He has opened up classical music to electronic experimentation.

SPOTLIGHT - GIANFRANCO IANNUZZI

 

"We aim to create something unique and share it with the world,

to bring people together to experience immersive art

and actively participate in what they see."

 

Iannuzzi has been a digital artist for more than 30 years, a pioneer in the field of digital art exhibitions, creating an incredible number of shows that have been seen by people all around the world.

 

He was born in Venice, Italy, and he credits his passion for transformative and innovative art experiences with his growing up in this amazing city, where you can breathe art, because it is everywhere.

 

"Since childhood,

I have always been fascinated by the reflections

that the architecture and life of the city

created on the water of the canals and the lagoon.

These reflections on the constantly moving surface of the water

altered reality and made me imagine mysterious and fantastic worlds.

Back then, I felt it was no less than magic.

That was the first nudge that pushed me into this world;

to do something new with image

and put it out in the world for the people to see."

 

Since he was young, Iannuzzi tried to communicate his visions - first with photography, then later with the immersive projection of images in three-dimensional spaces. The photographic works of his youth, that were printed and hung on the walls of the galleries, dealt with the decomposition and recomposition of reality, which is what he continues to do today - with the creation of extraordinary immersive exhibitions in special places around the world.

 

Iannuzzi explains that digital exhibitions use new technologies to create an immersive universe to immerse the audience in a three-dimensional work of art made of images and sounds. They speak the language of today and use the tools of this changing age. To explain, he quotes Gustav Klimt: "to every age its art, to art its freedom."

 

The surprising thing about Iannuzzi is that his education is not in art, as one would expect. He is a chemistry graduate with a doctorate in sociology. He was attracted to chemistry as the transformation of matter, and he was especially fascinated by the alchemy of colors. Chemistry is the basis of painting and pre-digital photography. He taught sociology for 15 years, and that became the basis of his research to create moments of socialization in an increasingly individualistic world. And also to change the passive relationship we have when we are sitting in front of a screen, or in front of a stage.

In Iannuzzi's exhibitions we are invited to take possession of the space, because in an immersive exhibition everyone is "on stage".

 

"To be able to express, using today's technology,

the beauty of art in an original and personal interpretation.

To invite the audience to look up from their smartphones and look around:

opening our senses to art in a collective space.

This is the purpose of my immersive art."

 

Above all, Iannuzzi says he tried to bring the public closer to art not through intellect but through emotion - he strives to create something that has more to do with sensory experience than cognitive learning.

 

"It's like the blank canvas for the painter,

only my brushes are the technology

and my colors are the digital media like images and sound."

 

His aim is to figure out how to make the best use of the space to create new compositions and perspectives that work from different points of view so that we, the viewers, create our own exhibition, according to our movements in space. Iannuzzi creates an emotional, musical and visual, immersive and interactive environment; recycling,rehabilitating, sublimating exceptional places through digital art and bringing us, the audience, to the heart of a work in which we are, ourselves, actors.

 

We are living in difficult times

and you have to be aware of this without giving up on your dreams.

It is important to dream.

Be curious,

lift your eyes from your screen

and open them to the world and the people around you,

because the most beautiful dreams are the ones I have had with my eyes open.

Keep dreaming and try to make it a reality.

 

Iannuzzi has had a long-term collaboration with Bruno Monnier, CEO of Culturespaces.

SPOTLIGHT - BRUNO MONNIER

Culturespaces was created in 1990, and has since then grown into one of the leading private organizations for managing monuments, museums and cultural venues. For 30 years it has been a pioneer in the creation of digital art centers and immersive digital exhibitions around the world. With the intention of sharing profound love and passion for art and culture, Culturespaces founded the first immersive digital art venue, Carrières de Lumières , in Provence, France, in 2012, and then the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, followed by new and impressive venues in Bordeaux, Korea, Dubai, and soon also Amsterdam, New York and Japan. These innovative cultural spaces have great popularity among a wide range of audiences, from art lovers and museum enthusiasts to people who rarely visit traditional spaces and exhibits.

 

"The overall message I want to convey is that culture should be shared with all audiences, not only an elite, using today's means, i.e. digital."

 

Monnier pioneered the idea of digital art centers, as a way of bringing art to people - people who have not had much interaction with art, as well as for those who have, but can now experience it digitally.

The idea is to present art in a way never before seen.

 

"We spark emotions within our visitors as they get immersed in the artwork,

the artist, and the story."

 

He explains that while classic museums serve their purpose, they are not accessible to everyone. Instead, the concept of a digital museum, one that Monnier created and disseminated through Culturespaces, opens a new medium, and bridges the gap by providing access to classic artworks halfway across the world.

 

"Digital art is a museum for everybody;

classic museums are for people to see the original artwork."

 

Museums have the mission of preserving and exposing to the public the original works of art, which are part of a rich artistic heritage, and as such, the function of classical museums is irreplaceable. Digital museums are therefore not substitutes for classic museums. They are something completely new and different. The digital media offer other forms of representation of art that can partly enrich the museum offer and partly generate a new artistic work. Digital technology creates a new offer that is of interest to a much wider public than the one that frequents traditional museums. Particularly a new language that is closer to the sensibility of young people and that can be understood by everyone, even if at different levels. Monnier's goal is to encourage this new public to the curiosity of discovering original works in traditional museums and exhibitions.

 

"The purpose of digital art is to bring in a new set of audiences

and introduce them to art."

 

Digital art is important because it is accessible to everyone and allows for an introduction to art for all ages, particularly children and young people.

 

"For kids, digital art centers are an amazing introduction to art.

They discover art, artists, paintings, music.

They will be able to find all this when they are older in museums and concert halls.

It is very important for their future."