BDH Immersive, a part of creative agency BDH, has opened a virtual reality (VR) experience in a specially constructed VR cinema inside a giant bowler hat in the Belgian beach resort of Knokke-Heist celebrating the life of artist René Magritte.
Made to mark a half-century since his death, the Magritte VR Experience is a shared immersive experience for a large audience in which 50 headsets featuring 3D binaural sound are triggered at the same time.
The immersive journey takes the audience through 40 iconic images by Magritte, including: The False Mirror 1928 (a giant eye with clouds), The Treachery of Images 1928 (Ceci n’est pas un pipe) and La Magie Noir 1935 (Georgette, Magritte’s wife, naked in a blue sky).
John Durrant, BDH Immersive Director and Director of Magritte Virtual Reality said in a statement: “Magritte is one of the most celebrated artists that’s ever lived and rightly so. He started his creative career as an extremely talented graphic designer and became a visionary of our dreams. I also trained as a graphic designer and a lot of the works spoke to me through Magritte’s use of graphic images and clever visual puns.”
Creating 40 hi-resolution scans of Magritte’s original masterpieces, BDH Immersive turned them into 360-degree volumetric landscapes. Building the VR experience took over 6 months of design and animation work with composer Timo Baker adding an original score.
“In our Magritte Virtual Reality experience we have built a journey through his wonderful landscapes and have captured their particular and peculiar atmospheres,” continued Durrant. “The whole team at BDH Immersive have loved spending so much time with his wonderful work, his sense of humour and his challenges to our perceptions. Overall for me though, was his great inspiration from his wife and muse, Georgette. Without her, I don’t think he would have looked at the world with such love and passion.
“As an artist he too would have been inspired by the emerging technologies. We can only dream what amazing virtual realities he would have created. I hope he would have enjoyed the Magritte Virtual Reality Experience.”
The Magritte VR Experience is open until 3rd September 2017. Adult tickets are priced at 14.95 while family tickets (2 adults + 2 children) are €49.95. For further info head to the official website.
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via Mint VR