Van Gogh 360 degrees heralds arrival of immersive art in Mumbai: Organisers

Perhaps the hottest art event in Mumbai today is Van Gogh 360deg The immersive art experience that invites you to ldquosurround yourself in Van Goghrdquo opened on January 20 at the World Trade Centre Cuffe Parade and will stay on view till March 3 Immersive art has been on the rise for some time now Some of the best experiences use projectors sensors even ARVR glasses so yoursquore able to well immerse yourselves in the artwork of a masterDepending on who you ask these experiences either qualify as art or an assault on it But thanks in part to Emily in Paris that ode to bourgeois aspirations immersive art experiences are seeing a great deal of interest in the West It was only a matter of time before one such experience would arrive on our shoresSome of my more erudite peers would be quick to point out that immersive art experiences in general and Van Gogh 360deg in particular are not art The projector images would never be able to capture Van Goghrsquos brushstrokes for instance theyrsquod say This is of course correct But as a believer in democratisation of art I remain a fan of immersive art experiencesWhich is more than what I can say about Van Gogh 360degrsquos Mumbai outing To be sure I havenrsquot seen an immersive Van Gogh experience in other cities By all estimates it is far better than what yoursquore likely to get here As it turns out this is because these are different shows altogether produced by different companiesAlso Read Immersive Van Gogh 360 degrees Hosts reveal how the experience was craftedWith the Intellectual Property Rights having run outmdashVan Gogh died in 1890mdashthe artistrsquos work is in the public domain which makes it possible to create and profit from interpretations and reproductions As a result you have multiple immersive Van Gogh experiences These include Van Gogh Alive Imagine Van Gogh The Immersive Exhibition Van Gogh The Immersive Experience Beyond Van Gogh Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit and our very own Van Gogh 360deg You can see how mistaking one for the other is easy And so walking into this show seems a bit like bear with me going to the cinema thinking yoursquore about to watch Sholay and discovering that yoursquod actually bought tickets to well Ramgarh Ke SholayAs you can imagine the experience is decidedly underwhelming For starters it doesnrsquot deliver what its name suggests a 360degree experience You essentially walk into a wedding tentlike enclosure where instead of gaudy fabric yoursquore seeing Van Goghrsquos work projected on the walls The roof doesnrsquot have a screen or a mirrormdashan acceptable feature for a 360degree experiencemdashleaving you staring at a dystopian dark space with projectors instead of a magical view of Starry NightThe immersive experience gets even less immersive each time a BEST bus passes by or an attentionseeking youth decides that the street outside is the most ideal spot to show off his silencershorn motorbike in what could only be construed as a loud and failed mating call Also routinely making their way through the paperthin walls of our immersive experience venue are the sounds of fireworks on the weekend celebrating a wedding at a nearby venue or the occasional ambulance siren presumably to carry off an art critic frothing at the mouthThankfully I am no art critic I donrsquot hold it against the selfie takers and reel makers itrsquos a wonderful if somewhat controversial way to engage with art and indeed one of the objectives of such experiences Such audiences are part of the generation that was born alongside the advent of highspeed internet in India and one that is coming of age Like it or not technology will play a huge role in the way art is created and consumed in the coming years Therefore the question of whether these creations and experiences are art is moot What isnrsquot is the quality of experience they deliver And humbly what Van Gogh 360deg delivers isnrsquot particularly highIn his Pulitzer Prizewinning article the journalist Gene Weingarten conducted an experiment involving the worldfamous violinist Joshua Bell to busk at a Washington Metro station Even as Bell played some of the most uplifting pieces known to the human race almost everyone walked past barely registering the presence of the maestro as an undercover busker A classical masterpiece wasnrsquot remotely on their minds as they rushed for meetings job interviews and presentationsWhen we walk into an art gallery a music concert or an immersive experience we are making a choice of removing ourselves from our dreary existence We are to paraphrase the Welsh poet WH Davies making that conscious decision to care to take the time to ldquostand and starerdquo Admittedly it is a privilege afforded to very few of usIn a city of more than a million people only a few thousand of us who can afford the ticket prices will made it to Van Gogh 360deg in the hope of removing ourselves from the humdrum of the everyday But itrsquos not the money or the fact that one has been exposed to better experiences thatrsquos bothersome rather the fact that despite having made that choice to extricate oneself from the dreariness of the everyday it manages to seep in to the experience one is trying to haveVan Gogh 360degrsquos popularity may be driven thanks to young influencers and pleasure seekers on social media that infinity mirror of millennial narcissism Certainly it is a unique experience for most of us and if yoursquore an immersive art virgin it is worth a visit But my submission is it wonrsquot be long before the novelty fades and they too see it for what it is worth a forgettable experience trying to pass itself as cool