by From floor-to-ceiling animated paintings to giant fluorescent ball pits, immersive experiences in stores have proliferated, often costing £25-£40 each. Now experts are claiming that many gimmicks are overpriced.
Prominent digital artists have claimed that some of the most popular commercial immersive experiences, especially those based on the work of late artists, such as Van Gogh and Dalí, are cash grabs that reward visitors little beyond Instagrammable times.
The proliferation of these shows, which often use quite old technology, is diluting the public’s perception of what immersive experiences can be and there is a risk that more innovative work will be pushed aside, the artists claimed.
Lucy Hardcastle, a designer and digital artist who runs her own studio in London, said the commercialization of immersive experiences has left no room for many original ideas.
Hardcastle, who has done work for the Victoria and Albert Museum and Chanel, drew a distinction between commercial experiences such as the Van Gogh, Monet and Dalí exhibitions, which are mainly screen-based or projection-based, and more cutting-edge shows featuring artists. created physical and digital environments from scratch.
For example, the work of studio DRIFT, which is directed by Dutch artists, includes the creation of a group of illuminated drones that create autonomously, programmed to fly using an algorithm derived from years of research on starling murmurs. Post-digital art group Random International created a Rain Room – where visitors stepped into a downpour without getting wet – which attracted thousands of visitors to the Barbican and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Projects of this nature often take years to develop.
In contrast, some of the more popular commercial experiences that have opened up from these breakthroughs primarily use projection mapping – where displays are projected onto real-world objects or spaces to simulate environments or augment reality. – which they had not created and went back to the. 1990s.
“I think things like the Van Gogh experience, and that price point, really add to the perception of the craft of these types of events,” said Hardcastle, who also teaches at Chelsea School of Art.
Hardcastle said she thought the word immersive had become “a gimmicky tagline”. While he was once associated with shows that engaged all the senses, now he was often more concerned with creating something that looks good on Instagram.
“It’s almost like our expectations or our standards have just gone down [by these experiences]. And so there’s less demand to do something that’s really good.”
Ralph Nauta, co-founder of studio DRIFT, also said that it was relatively easy for commercial enterprises to make projected animations of the work of a dead artist. But their own projects, such as Drifter, which involved a floating concrete block, took years of basic research. ‘To physically – and with the laws of nature – have a block of concrete flying, that’s 15 years of work for that one piece,’ he said.
Nauta described popular on-screen immersive experiences as a “money grab”, arguing that they did not provide thought or value to the audience. “The visitor walks out and feels, oh, I’m $50 lighter, but I haven’t experienced anything, I’ve just been put in front of a screen.”
He also questioned whether the dead artists who underwent immersive experiences would relate to the way their work was being displayed. “It’s like, oh, we do a Van Gogh show, we do a Dalí show. No one knows if this was wanted. I think it’s very disrespectful.”
“It gives the whole industry a bad name and could be, well, much more so.”
The artists said the industry needed organizations such as the Serpentine and arebyte galleries in London, which supported emerging artists working with immersive technology.
Claudel Goy, managing director of arebyte, said the increase in commercial shows such as the Van Gogh experience attracted new audiences to the immersion and raised its public profile. But she said public institutions were needed to support cutting-edge work.
Goy said the prices of immersive experiences reflected the high overheads associated with the technology and the cost of spaces in prime city locations such as London. Arebyte hopes to open an immersive art museum in east London, with ticketed exhibitions costing up to £15. She said: “We will definitely not charge £25. Who can afford it? As a family of four, [that’s] £100 – that’s totally out of reach.”
Hannes Koch, co-founder of the Dutch Random International said that immersive artist-led exhibitions could not compete with their commercial peers because it was much more complicated to create something custom than using large screens.
He said the ideal price point for immersive experiences is between £8 and £15. “I don’t think it’s criminal to charge for something of high quality. But I think it’s good to keep accessibility high on the radar.”
Sana Ali Aamir, the UK general manager of Fever, the company behind Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, defended the pricing of its most popular exhibition, which she said helped fund the development of their other, newer shows. innovator, such as Dopamine Land and Bubble Planet, which cost around £15-20.
She said that while the technology behind the Van Gogh experience was now outdated, the storytelling in the experience, which takes visitors inside some of his most famous paintings through two-story, 360-degree digital projections, was still powerful and valuable. . money. It could be argued that it was a richer way to experience his work because the audience learned more about the artist, she said.
She added: “The value is in that innovation and making it more accessible. There is something for everyone in this market. You can use those expensive things to push the more affordable things, which is to give access to more people and cultures.”
