As I was “immersing” myself in the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience at Resorts World Sentosa this week, I couldn’t help but wonder, what would the artist think of his work being turned into an almost-theme-park-like experience, complete with a Virtual Reality tour of his world?
Would he give a wink of delight – that since its debut in 2017, this attraction has entertained five million people worldwide – or would it be a wink of despair that his art, created out of so much pain and loneliness in his short 37 years of life, has been “Disney-fied” for the masses?
What would he think of the state of technology that allows his life story and work to be reimagined in multi-media formats and replicas of his work to be used as backgrounds for cocktail parties and events?
“He should be happy,” said a friend. “Art should engage.”
Another said, “Do you think he’s turning over in his grave?”
A wink, by the way, is exactly what you get when you first walk down the steps to the exhibition, which is making its South-east Asian debut at Resorts World Sentosa in a collaboration with H&B and Exhibition Hub and Fever.
Two rows of portraits line the stairway to the start of the exhibition and, if you walk slowly enough (which you should to fully enjoy the grand entrance), best be careful – I nearly stumbled when one of the portraits winked at me.
Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, I make my way down the stairway to find myself in Sunflowerland – there’s a wall plastered with gigantic sunflowers, leaving you in no doubt whose world you are stepping into. Altogether, more than 300 of Van Gogh’s artworks are displayed in a multitude of mediums across various thematic zones.
As I walk through the physical spaces, I am also navigating through the app – as much as I want to be entertained and to feel, I also want to learn.
Tech is good at this – bridging worlds. Tech, when used well, is also good at scaling and creating experiences which does not require too much human labour to operate on a daily basis – and this is a real problem these days with the people crunch in Singapore. The space where the experience is being held is the theatre which used to host live theatre productions created by Resorts World Sentosa. When Covid brought these productions to a halt, my thinking is, it gave the resort time and space to rethink its entertainment and this curated exhibition, which has been held around the world, is a good way forward in current times.
Back to the experience. First, you learn about the artist, and his relationship with his siblings. He was a prolific letter writer, writing 844 letters, of which 652 were to his brother, Theo. He was an even more prolific artist, creating over 2,000 works of art – the majority of which was created in the last 10 years of his life. Guess no streaming and social media back then (1853-1890) to distract and suck up time.
Physically, your senses are fully engaged – there’s lots of light, sound, moving images and colour in every space to astound and astonish you.
A bust of the artist becomes a canvas of ever-changing colours …
A vase forms the centrepiece around which the artist’s works of irises, sunflowers, roses come alive …
You walk through rooms of moving images – some can make you quite dizzy like this sunflower room.
In the Japanese-inspired section, I felt I could float away like cherry blossoms over an ocean ….
Still feeling rather disoriented, I stumble into a space where I find real humans having cocktails and canapes against a backdrop of full-length LED walls of moving images – this video captures the inspiration Van Gogh drew from the “Ukiyo-e” style of woodblock prints and paintings of Japanese artists such as Hokusai. I sit on a deckchair to ride the waves and sip a cocktail.
There’s a colouring corner where you can, if you are inspired, colour some of his work but I wasn’t in the mood. I was headed for the Virtual Reality room.
Photo Credit: H&B
“Are you wearing a pacemaker?” asked the staff.
I shook my head.
“Are you epileptic? Prone to fits?”
I shook my head.
“Do you get dizzy?”
Yes, if I shake my head one more time, I wanted to say.
He then hands me the pair of VR glasses – now, I have to say this is one piece of technology that has been the most disappointing in its evolution. It felt as heavy and clunky as the first pair of Samsung VR glasses I bought almost 10 years ago.
The 11-minute tour through Van Gogh’s world with narrated audio also didn’t feel like a great improvement on those early VR tours we demonstrated at our conferences almost a decade ago.
You sit on a stool and you try and move because it offers a 360 degree view but it’s not that comfortable. The images were also slightly out of focus.
But the overall effect and experience is pretty cool and entertaining, as this experience is meant to be.
As for what Van Gogh might say, well, my favourite part of the VR tour is one of his quotes, “Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realising it.”
Wink, wink.
