Digitally Reimagining Art
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 2:12PM by Laura Beltz Imaoka, University of California, Irvine, Visual Studies
This digitally-rendered 3D tour of Picasso’s landmark work was created by Lena Gieseke, a visual effects artist who was once married to the filmmaker Tim Burton. It takes you through the artwork, literally puffing the 2D images like cut-out balloons as you meander through the space. Guernica, of course, needs less of an introduction as Picasso’s famous mural memorializing the 1937 bombing of the remote Spanish town by Nazi supported fascist, Francisco Franco. The mural was first on display at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair and has since become an anti-war icon.
What is perhaps more fascinating than the artwork’s three minute 3D treatment are the reactions it has garnered. Comments on YouTube, while dubious in origin (note the 110 age below), are none-the-less instructive to comprehend common perspectives on the new wave of digital artwork imaging.
Positive responses argue for the clarity that digital imaging can give to the abstract painting: “This is a truly moving video: the painting has now been brought into the light” (Malaysia, age 110); “Amazing. This is the first time I've ever been able to see the elements of this painting clearly. Up to now, it was just a huge slab of noise and horror, which of course is the whole point of the picture. But seeing each bit clearly adds so much to it” (United States, age 47).
Negative comments reflect on the artist’s intentionality, questioning whether it is right to see an intentionally flattened artwork reworked into 3D: “Wasn't Picasso's work like this one meant to show 3 dimensions in 2 dimensions? Playing with perspective? If so, a 3d depiction of it would be reality...not this” (United States, age 36).
Other remarks completely embrace this new technology, but encourage more interactive uses of it: “This should be interactive. Not just a video of a set path, but a virtual sculpture you could control the view of yourself” (Denmark, age 31).
While Picasso’s artistic legacy was ushering in the shift to flattened picture planes, we can question whether in the case of "Guernica 3D," the digital “making of space” actually changes the painting’s meaning. By virtually “walking through” Picasso’s wrecked buildings and the suffering of humans and animals alike, one could argue the viewer is getting a better sense of the painting’s narrative and perhaps even taking more time to consider these realities.
Writing on the Huffington Post in November 2010, art historian James Elkins compiled some telling statistics about how long people actually look at art in a museum:
There have been a number of surveys of how visitors interact with paintings in museums. One found that an average viewer goes up to a painting, looks at it for less than two seconds, reads the wall text for another 10 seconds, glances at the painting to verify something in the text, and moves on. Another survey concluded people looked for a median time of 17 seconds. The Louvre found that people looked at the Mona Lisa an average of 15 seconds, which makes you wonder how long they spend on the other 35,000 works in the collection. A survey at the Metropolitan Museum of Art supposedly found that people look at artworks for an average of 32.5 seconds each, but they must not have counted the ones people glance at.
Undoubtedly, digital technology is changing the way we consume culture and engage with art. In three minutes, not only can this painting be “visited” by a more far reaching audience, but if the viewer stays in front of their screen, it may actually provide a better engagement with the images than one might have in a museum.
Do the 3D digital techniques applied to Guernica make you uncomfortable?
Reader Comments (5)
Wow! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It seems like this project is creating an entirely new object with its own materiality. It seems to engage in a bit of speculative fiction by generating three dimensional forms from the painting. In this way, calling this work a "tour" of the work is not quite accurate. It is doing something quite distinct from something like the Google Art Project, which offers extremely high quality images and extensive zoom options. I'm not exactly sure what is gained by inflating Picasso's violently flattened and disjointed figures into oddly buoyant forms. I'm also curious about artist's rights and copyright issues with a project like this. I'm not sure if I'm uncomfortable or just a bit confused about what this project really offers. Scale is something that contributes so immensely to the power of this painting, it is HUGE! Further, the way in which Picasso's forms are compressed onto the painting's surface is what the work is all about. Lots to consider here!
This is such a fascinating intersection between digital formation and art presentation, though I'm not sure what to make of it! What do we gain visually or even subjectively from being inside the Guernica? My first visceral reaction was disorientation rather than insight, which prompts me to consider how such 3D tours reconfigure standards of perspective and distance. I'm curious to see if other art pieces lend themselves as well to 3D renderings.
In watching the tour, I was most struck by the musical score and how it aided the pacing and unwieldy movements in and around the painting. This element of sound design sets up another striking difference in spaces of art observation. Most of my visits to art museum involve walking through wide, silence spaces, with hushed conversations sprinkled here and there, whereas this tour provides a lush, expansive soundtrack as my guide. I wonder how we can further explore the effects of sound and image here in historically "soundless" art piece like Picasso's, since we tend to privilege the visual over the aural in our practices of spectatorship.
Laura, thanks for your post! To me, this is actually a fun or amusing piece, which is (ahem) pretty bizarre when talking about anything related to Guernica. It has the "wow" or "cool" factor of traveling through a "famous" painting, obtaining some sort of privileged view, never intended by Picasso. But who cares, as it is a derivative work, with its own artistic agenda and result. It is a funky re-imaging and re-imagining of forms within Picasso's famous painting--stress on playing with formal aspects here-- flexing Maya, Shake, After Effects, and Photoshop muscles (and big ones at that!) I agree with the respondent (Denmark 31) that an interactive option would be best, so the viewer could travel through "Guernica 2.0" as opposed to receiving a prerecorded imaginary tour. But is this work meant to be "educational"?? Ultimately, I think the digital razzle-dazzle may actually serve to empty the original's political content, as opposed to reinforcing it. But dang, it looks cool. (And not sure about the music here, felt like I was in a Yankee candle shop.)
Interesting (and clearly provocative) post! I've been rolling your post around in my mind since you brought it up and for me there are two entirely different issues here. One deals with the painting itself (or an interpretation/transformation of that work), and the other deals more explicitly with spectator engagement in the context of the museum.
Regarding the painting and this particular video, it seems to fit within a larger trend of trying to "visualize" Picasso's work in alternative ways. I found this video by Marcelo Ortiz from the Vancouver Film School that also plays with a kind of 3D visualization of the painting (and paintings by others by artists like Dali) by making the figure "come to life," so to speak, to give it a personality all its own. I also found examples of Guernica rendered in relief. However, perhaps more pertinent to this conversation, by clicking around on YouTube I came across this video that edits the video posted above by Laura to be an anaglyphic image (and therefore even more "3D")? Regardless what can be "gained" so to speak, I think revisiting/revisioning Guernica speaks more to the desires of the spectator than anything else. Maybe this excessive 3D rendering of Guernica points out how elusive the original actually is?
It might be interesting to see what somebody like Nik Honeysett or another scholar from Museum Studies thinks about a work like this in terms of museum engagement. With people spending so little time physically in front of the artwork as cited by Elkins, a video like this makes me wonder if it might allow people to reconsider the original in unique ways and promote a deeper engagement with the work. Not because you can get "deeper" in to the cubist scene, but because it allows people to question the original in new and inventive ways. I'm unsure of how that might play out in practice, however...
(Kristen -- And yes... it does sound like the music from inside Yankee Candles! Thanks to your comment, I will forever be associating Picasso with flavors like "vanilla spice," "autumn fruit," and "bahama breeze.")
First, thank you all for your comments!
Anna, I love that you mentioned scale. What is always fascinating is the complete disregard of scale when it comes to famous artworks. I’ve heard countless visitors to the Mona Lisa are disenchanted by its small size, as its reputation often makes it larger than life. Conversely, with Guernica, people may be overwhelmed by its size, not expecting it beforehand. This 3D treatment neither confirms nor disconfirms its size, however.
Racquel, sound is definitely a fascinating element and I can imagine superimposing an alternate score (imagining hard rock) and how that could alter ones emotional interpretation while watching. The silent gallery walk is another qualitative difference between virtual and actual museum space. Though it makes me wonder how the Walkman (and today’s iPod) helped change what once could only be a silent experience. One could do a study to see if solitary museum goers view art with personal music or without and their reasoning for doing so.
Kristen, razzle-dazzle indeed! No doubt there’s been a trend of interactive virtual spaces to teach history – I’m thinking of the rising field of spatial humanities that are using GIS software to display and analyze information related to a physical (often vanished) location. A teaching tool could be added to “Guernica 3D” to similar effect to reintroduce the history of the memorialized event. Google Art Project does this the Google-way, but not quite as 3D.
Christina, I have been thinking about this too, and particularly how famous artworks continue to circulate in the popular imagination as famous/must-sees. A work like Guernica 3D validates the artwork’s famousness (or “aura”) and like John Urry’s idea of the hermeneutic circle of touristic motivation, it helps induce/maintain the desire to visit the painting’s original. Perhaps Internet-provided information makes for a more informed/engaged/prepared museum visitor who no longer needs to rely on small info plaques, guided tours, or hearsay for their knowledge in the gallery.
A lot to consider here! (And Yankee Candle's Macintosh Apple is my favorite scent!)