Van Gogh: An Immersive Journey

Alex Le Guillou gave audiences the chance to see landscapes with the eyes of Van Gogh in an immersive exhibition.

In early 2022, creative studio Nohlab asked Visual Artist and Notch Specialist Alex Le Guillou to help execute a new immersive project on Van Gogh at the Royal Dublin Society. They tasked Le Guillou specifically with bringing art to life in a section of the project titled “Living Paintings.” Their brief was simple: envelop the audience in a landscape inspired by the painter’s vision.

In their beginning conversations, the Nohlab team and Le Guillou used a few famous pieces, such as Wheatfields with Crows and Starry Night, as a starting point. The Notch artist tried to translate the motion of these landscapes and the sensations they evoke into a digitally processed scene, emphasising depth.

Undertaking his sequences through heavy trial and error, Le Guillou freely generated many different looks and experiences to target Nohlab’s expectations and see what worked best. According to the artist, developing numerous examples in this way gave the studio a lot of confidence and made them feel safe in the endeavour.

He exported the style frames in high resolution to test them in 3D simulations of the venue, generating final landscapes from different textures placed in the 3D space. The artist also combined point clouds from previously captured trees. Once the artist and client agreed on key points, Le Guillou animated and timed everything directly in Notch. Surrounded by the finished product, audiences were transported directly into Van Gogh’s perspective, seeing with the artist’s eyes.