The Dali Museum is bringing an early Salvador Dali painting to life in virtual reality.
To celebrate the opening of its new exhibition “Disney and Dalí: Architects of the Imagination” on January 23rd, the Dali Museum is blending virtual reality with art by taking visitors inside the 1935 painting Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus.
Visitors to the VR exhibit titled “Dreams of Dali,” will get to explore the world of the surrealist master like never before. By donning an Oculus Rift headset, users will be able to move around and explore the environment and elements in the painting. Interestingly enough, the VR painting experience also incorporates little surprises and motifs from other Dali paintings in the museum’s permanent collection.
The exhibit’s Dali and Walt Disney theme takes a look at the relationship between the two artists who had first partnered together to make the short animated film Destino. Individually, both were always looking for new ways explore innovative art techniques and probably would have loved virtual reality as an artistic medium.
The museum enlisted agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners to create “Dreams of Dali” and it took a team of developers about 4 months to build out the roughly 5-minute long VR experience.
One can only imagine how challenging it may have been to research every detail of Dali’s painting and bring it to life in virtual reality, keep it as imaginatively close as possible to what Dali might have seen when he dreamed up his surreal masterpiece.
Although a good amount of conversation about virtual reality revolves around gaming and cinema for now, the idea of being able to step inside your favorite artist’s painting and explore the crazy worlds of their mind, brings an entirely new level of immersive art viewing. And I am sure kids will love this in their art class as well.
For those of us who can’t make it out to the exhibit in person, you’re in luck. Once the exhibit opens, the VR experience will be available for download on DreamsofDali.org, where you can check it out on mobile, desktop, or with your VR viewer like Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR.