Moving Sound Pictures
Moving Sound Pictures
About
Moving Sound Pictures is a project in which users can interactively explore paintings by famous and contemporary visual artists through playful actions using VR technology. Get information about the painting and the artist such as historical aspects of the artwork, painting techniques, etc. Pictures become audible and a new musical instrument emerges! Everyone can create their artworks individually and discover the artwork from another perspective!
The multimedia artist and developer of the project, Konstantina Orlandatou, creates imaginary worlds based on her artistic interpretation using VR technologies as a medium for art mediation! Her vision is to support museums and similar institutions to include XR technologies in their permanent exhibitions: presenting the analogue artwork next to the digital one and mixing visual arts with music for making the visit to a museum an unforgettable interactive and immersive experience to the audience of any age.
VR Environments
Women
“Women” is a VR installation dedicated to female visual artists who have contributed in an exceptional and unique way, writing their own history in a mens-dominated world. Some of them highly got recognition during their lifetime, others not.
Let us explore their works in an adventurous interactive environment!
The environment has been developed as a single-user or multi-user experience.
Featured artists:
Prismes électriques, Sonia Delaunay
Constructivist Still Life, Alexandra Alexandrowna Exter
Spatial Composition 4, Katarzyna Kobro
Composition with Circles, Squares and Rectangles, Sophie Taeuber-Arp
The Abstract Painters
Paintings by Kandinsky, Lissitzky, Mondrian and Malevich are implemented in a virtual gallery where the user has the chance to “jump into” the paintings and interact with them. With an implemented audio guide (like in a museum) users can get information about the artist and the painting. The Abstract Painters are available in three languages (English, German, and Chinese) for all HTC compatible devices as a free app (PCVR) in Viveport.
Download here: Viveport
Featured artists:
Composition A, Piet Mondrian
The Merry Structure, Wassily Kandinsky
Proun R.V.N.2., Eliezer Markowich Lissitzky
Suprematist Composition, Kazimir Malevich
Dali's Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” has been adapted to a VR environment consisting of interactive Flex Objects. The user can move freely around in Dali’s desert scenery and can interact with different objects of the painting. Some of them are used as musical instruments, others, such as the melting clocks, are used as objects for controlling music and sounds. A creature in the middle of the painting observes and follows the user who is moving around!
Featured artist:
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dalí
Hommage
Hommage” is an interactive VR installation in which three artworks have been adapted to a virtual three-dimensional environment. Explore Dali’s living room inspired by Mae West’s face, interact with Matisse’s spray of leaves, and play with Picasso’s mandolin and guitar.
“Hommage” is a tribute to friendship, common respect, and admiration between artists, who are milestones in art history of the 20th century. Salvador Dali was fascinated by the actress and sex icon Mae West. Henri Matisse felt at the beginning threatened by the younger painter Pablo Picasso but as time passed a creative rivalry developed into a respectful artistic relationship between them.
Featured artists:
Mae West’s face, Salvador Dalí
Mandolin and Guitar, Pablo Picasso
Spray of Leaves, Henri Matisse
Ligeti’s “Artikulation”
In 1958 György Ligeti composed and notated the electronic piece Artikulation. Its realisation took place in the Studio of Electronic Music of the Western German Radio (WDR) in Cologne in cooperation with Gottfried Michael Koenig and partially Cornelius Cardew. In 1970 Rainer Wehinger created a listening score (Hörpartitur) by using specific graphic symbols to visualise the different sonorous effects. Experience Ligeti’s world full of sounds, texts, words, languages and sentences in an immersive VR experience!
Collaborations
SEE, HEAR, PLAY KANDINSKY!
Wassily Kandinsky’s “White Dot” (Composition 248) – permanently exhibited in the Hamburger Kunsthalle – has been “transformed” into an interactive 3D space. Kandinsky’s theory between the relation of shapes, colours and sounds works as an inspiration for reinterpreting his painting through the lens of VR technology. On the one hand, the visitor can admire the original artwork during his visit to the museum and on the other hand can explore the artwork from a unique perspective in the digital world.
For more information: https://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/en/see-hear-play-kandinsky
Documentation
A video documentation
What is the motivation of Konstantina Orlandatou for this project? Why and how does she use VR technologies for art mediation? In a short documentary video, she explains the objectives of her project and her own motivation as a composer and multimedia artist. What are the advantages or constraints of VR technologies and how do they influence the creative process?
Team
Konstantina Orlandatou
Artistic director, concept, VR development, music & sound design
Stefanos Papadatos
VR graphics & implementation
Events
Is it all just an illusion? VR installation @ Hamburger Kunsthalle
Exploring selected paintings of the Old Masters in virtual reality
Welcome to the fascinating world of illusions! As part of the exhibition “Illusion. Dream – Identity – Reality” at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, multimedia composer and VR developer Konstantina Orlandatou brings four art works to life. Discover hidden details of the artworks and let the boundaries between the analog and digital worlds blur into each other. How does virtual reality expand our perception, our imagination, and perhaps even our knowledge?
The project Moving Sound Pictures invites art lovers and the curious to interactively explore works of the Old Masters through the playful use of VR technology. Grab items from Johann Georg Hinz’s Cabinet of Curiosities (1666), step on Wilhelm Schubert von Ehrenberg’s seemingly endless Scala Regia in the Vatican (1667) or find out what can be hidden behind the curtain in Jan van Rossums’ Still Life with Flowers and a Curtain (1671). Through interaction with objects of the paintings, music and soundscapes are created which provide a new dimension to the artwork resulting in an unforgettable VR-experience. Will your perspective and perception of the art works change through this digital experience?
Konstantina Orlandatou’s VR installation “Is it all just an Illusion?” is a collaboration between the ligeti center, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT).
Tickets and exhibition period
Konstantina Orlandatou’s VR installation “Is it all just an Illusion?” is part of the exhibition “IIlusion. Dream – Identity – Reality”, which is shown at the Hamburger Kunsthalle from the 6th of December 2024 to the 6th of April 2025. The VR installation can usually be experienced from 11 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 5 pm.
Tickets (regular admission 16 euros, discounts available) can be purchased online or directly at the Hamburger Kunsthalle.