110 LIGHT + TECH
THERE HAS been a sudden rash of venues around the world offering ‘immersive’ artistic experiences using techniques such as 360° projection and projection mapping. While they appear to be serving up something spectacular, mind-bending and mindful (from limited experience, bean bags and deck chairs seem de rigueur in the immersive bit), it’s fair to say that critical appraisal has often been tepid if not downright sceptical. Peter Conrad, writing in The Guardian, was relatively benign: ‘The immersion promised by an array of art exhibitions throughout London is also a harmless metaphor: at worst, you are inundated by light.’
Dead artists from Munch to Monet and Khalo to Klimt have been subjected to the 3D light and colour projection treatment. Conrad visited Frameless at Marble Arch, which parcels up a whole raft of artists under different themes in its four galleries. ‘A million lumens bombard you with more than 479 million pixels, while 158 speakers saturate you with music; the effect is a soft psychedelia, which weakens the upright demeanour of Georges Seurat’s picnickers beside the Seine and entices
you to join the sinners who enjoy kinkier pleasures in Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights,’ wrote Conrad in his Guardian article.
Alex Fleming-Brown on Vice is rather more vituperative. His piece on the subject is titled ‘Immersive Art Exhibitions Are Everywhere and They’re Awful’, which is a bit of a giveaway. ‘”Immersive art” is the latest lazy lovechild of TikTok and enterprising warehouse landlords,’ writes Fleming-Brown. ‘Ready your Oculus headsets, earplugs and gas masks or simply sit on your arse and read – I’ve been to London’s immersive art exhibitions, so you don’t have to.’ Having visited Spitalfields Van Gogh London Exhibit: The Immersive Experience, I would say that having to begin by crossing the immersive experience (supposedly the finale of the whole thing) in order to access the loo through a door in one of the projections rather took the gilt off the gingerbread. Warehouse vibe indeed.
Hockney, of course, is the only live artist to have some say in the matter with the Lightroom installation in
London’s Coal Drops Yard, perhaps more successful as a result – and for having his own commentary. However, here is not the place to fully explore the merits or otherwise of this alternative way of presenting old and new masters, or whether these enterprises are beneficial and educational, or downdumbing. There is, though, an important distinction between what are digitised three-dimensional projections of original two-dimensional paintings, and light art that is created to be immersive and experiential – where the medium is the message. There is a possibility of muddying the waters between the gimmicky and the genuine artistic exploration of digital techniques – those artists using light, colour and reflectivity, plus a whole panoply of digital techniques, to create a unique, immersive, sometimes interactive experience.
There is also non-digital art, which creates an immersive effect with the use of just light and reflectivity, with mirrors (Yayoi Kusama, overleaf) or the semi-translucency of water jets (Olafur Eliasson), or the emitted light and colour of the sources themselves (the 1960s/70s
VOLKER VORNEHM /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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