Art Plunge VR Experience
• 4-star rating
• PCVR, Quest
• Art
• Comfortable, Stationary
Art Plunge is a short but fun distraction that takes five extremely well known paintings and transforms them into something different by adding a third dimension and extrapolating beyond the frame. Some might call it as corruption of great art, but others could see it as taking a new perspective on several over exposed pieces of art.
You arrive at this experience in a dark lobby, on one side a wall with five paintings and on the other blue marble earth on a starfield. Each of the five paintings presented in their original aspect with a brief accompanying text, and an invitation to "enter into our VR interpretation". Plunging into the paining, the frame dissolves and the image takes on a new fully realized depth (no flat 3D layers here) and the periphery surrounds you with new detail complimentary to the original. Ambient audio nicely adds to the level of immersion.
The five paintings are Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, DaVinci's Mona Lisa, Van Gogh's Starry Night and Michalengelo's The Creation Of Adam. These VR interpretations certainly distort the original intent of the artists, but only the stuffiest of art historians are likely to not get something out of this fun experience.
If there was anything we could recommend to improve this experience, it would be for an opportunity to view the original painting in some detail. Also the artworks' descriptions are very brief - there would be value in a lengthier description about the history and interpretation of each painting, and perhaps also further text explaining the VR re-interpretation.
Comparing Starry Night with the expanded experience of Art Plunge.
✅ Fun re-imaginings add new insights into overexposed art
✅ Does something only possible in VR
❌ Short experience.
• YouTube: Trailer
• Languages: Cantonese, English, Greek, Japanese, Mandarin, Swedish.
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