What better praise for a performer or designer than an audience stopped in their tracks, forgetting about space and time and wanderering around in the dream you’ve created? Such a spell can in many forms: an eye-opening message, a performer’s charisma, a beautiful sound, a unique setting. Or … a stunning application of visual imagination.
Below, we share four exceptional cases we encountered recently of international artists who seem to have this mesmerising power. They all explore novel ways of visual perception by seducing the eye to accept and enter a bizar imagined reality.
Dancers from another planet
A great way to create life like 3D characters is to digitize the essence of real people, using camera’s and software to ‘capture’ their postures and motions. This digital model is then ‘dressed’ with computer generated flesh and skin. Method Studios took this to the max using absolutely incredible textures and physics simulations. This video is meant as a showcase of what they can do with advertisers logo’s and identities. So it just goes on and on…
Walking through a fairy tale
Tokyo-based teamLab uses a mix of mobile devices, sensors and computer renderings, to immerse visitors into four different mesmerising worlds. You really need to 
check out this great report on CNN . One room e.g. is like a pond, where projections of Koi fish move around you according to your movements.
Living walls
The office building Terrell Place in Washington DC has 1,700 square feet of special motion-activated display space installed on its walls creating a quite psychedellic experience. The interactive installation envelops the entire room in spiraling lights or nature scenes depending on the mood. Created by ESI design the walls can be programed to show a constantly changing series of patterns that are activated when people move nearby.
Bodypaint like you’ve never seen it before
Alexa Meade paints portraits on the human body that turn real life people into seemingly 2D works of art. You have to check the video to understand the amazing effect. It works so well because of her expressionist brush strokes. It is as though beautifully painted figure steps right out of the oil painting into the real world. You may have never seen anything like it!
Lasting impressions
These projects show that novel (applications of) techniques keep taking us by surprise, and there is thankfully no end in sight. And such innovations can make a lasting impression in the context of a venue or exhibitions, beyond ‘oh that’s funny’. These cases also show that the human body as a source of inspiration never grows old, and that there seems to be a trend towards more and more immersive experiences.
- More work of body paint artist Alexa made
- A somewhat similar project we did for the van Gogh Museum, using not paint put light
- Like this effect? With an app like Artisto you can try to artistify your own videos
- Method Studios the guys who made the crazy dancers
- Esi design who turned Terrell Place into a mad house
Thanks Roy Herrebrugh, Ginna Mora for pointing out some of these cases
