Project Description

Van Gogh: An Immersive Journey

Alex Le Guillou gave audiences the chance to see landscapes with the eyes of Van Gogh in an immersive exhibition.

In early 2022, creative studio Nohlab asked Visual Artist and Notch Specialist Alex Le Guillou to help execute a new immersive project on Van Gogh at the Royal Dublin Society. They tasked Le Guillou specifically with bringing art to life in a section of the project titled “Living Paintings.” Their brief was simple: envelop the audience in a landscape inspired by the painter’s vision.

In their beginning conversations, the Nohlab team and Le Guillou used a few famous pieces, such as Wheatfields with Crows and Starry Night, as a starting point. The Notch artist tried to translate the motion of these landscapes and the sensations they evoke into a digitally processed scene, emphasising depth.

Undertaking his sequences through heavy trial and error, Le Guillou freely generated many different looks and experiences to target Nohlab’s expectations and see what worked best. According to the artist, developing numerous examples in this way gave the studio a lot of confidence and made them feel safe in the endeavour.

He exported the style frames in high resolution to test them in 3D simulations of the venue, generating final landscapes from different textures placed in the 3D space. The artist also combined point clouds from previously captured trees. Once the artist and client agreed on key points, Le Guillou animated and timed everything directly in Notch. Surrounded by the finished product, audiences were transported directly into Van Gogh’s perspective, seeing with the artist’s eyes.

“I could iterate quickly and propose many different visual concepts from the very start of the creation process. And thanks to Notch’s real-time particle management, later on, I could see the final result without waiting for a high-resolution output.”

Alex Le Guillou, Visual Artist & Notch Specialist

Additional press coverage:
The Irish Times, Silicon Republic, Irish Tech News, Irish Examiner.

Credits
Creative Studio: Nohlab
Commissioned by: Theatre of Light
Client: Royal Dublin Society
Technical Director: Fehmican Gözüm

Visual Artist & Notch Specialist, “Living Paintings”: Alex Le Guillou (Living Paintings part)
Music & Sound Design: Gökalp Kanatsız