Culture taps virtual reality
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Art exhibitions become interactive experiences
By Park Jin-hai
At Culture Station Seoul 284, formerly Seoul Station, visitors can walk into the famous Dutch post-impressionist painter Van Gogh’s master piece Night Cafe in Arles.
By simply wearing a Samsung Gear VR and clicking a button on the headset, the visitor can walk around the cafe and see the starry night through the window, sharing the feeling the great Dutch artist felt in the 19th century.
The exhibition titled “Van Gogh Inside: Festival of Light and Music” differs from the traditional display of exhibiting paintings and has adopted a number of smart devices that make the exhibition go beyond the small canvas in order to give a different experience.
Virtual reality (VR), which emerged as the hottest topic at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, goes beyond the traditional game industry, changing the cultural landscape, including art exhibitions.
This computer-created three-dimensional world is turning painting exhibitions, which had been stationary for centuries, into interactive experiences.
A visitor places a tablet on a photograph at the “Van Gogh Inside” exhibition. / Courtesy of Media N Art
Ji Sung-wook, exhibition organizer and CEO of Media N Art, said he wants to provide an overwhelming emotional experience to viewers where they can see before their eyes the two-dimensional paintings being unfolded into three dimensional space.
“Long neglected, the fine arts have now emerged as one of the most promising areas for the application of virtual reality technology,” he said. “VR is gaining popularity as a great communication tool that connects the viewer with the artist. In the future, we will see more VRs at art exhibitions.”
Along with virtual reality devices, it also adopts augmented reality in the exhibition, where if a visitor places his tablet on modern day photos of places in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, those photos turn into Van Gogh’s landscapes stroke by stoke.
Its organizer said that compared with the 2014 Van Gogh exhibition, the number of daily visitor rose from 1,000 to 15,000.
Cultural heritage has been another resource that virtual reality technology can actively tap into.
The National Museum of Korea has a smart exhibition, using augmented reality technology that has been in place since last year. When the AR Curator application is installed on a smartphone, the relic or artwork that the visitor is standing in front of will also appear on the screen providing a variety of information.
The 2016 World Dinosaur Expo features holographic dinosaurs. / Yonhap
Although the service is limited, it enables the visitor to listen to the actual ringing sound in front of an ancient bell or see the related video footage.
“There have been concerns in the United States that when museums apply modern technologies, the visitors’ attention could be swayed away from the exhibit itself. But I have a different view. By applying these technologies, I believe people would become more intrigued to see what the real exhibit would be,” said museum director Kim Young-na.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology under the project name K-Culture Time Machine also developed an AR (Augmented Reality) application platform letting the visitors appreciate the relic, crisscrossing the past with the present.
The application, after scanning the related pictures and historical incidents on a data base, can project the past information onto the present day cultural heritage. For instance, if it is viewing Changdeok Palace Injeongjeon Hall, the main throne hall, viewers can see the flower patters on the ridge of the chamber roof under the relics category or a congratulatory ceremony for a royal baby under the incidents category on their smartphones.
Traditional media outlets have been one of the early adopters in terms of the latest VR technology.
Not only the K-pop singers’ music videos, but also commercials and TV programs are being made in the virtual reality format.
“Joeunday Soju” has unveiled a VR commercial on YouTube, where viewers can get the feeling as if they are in the commercial, drinking with actress Park Bo-young starring in a 360 degree wide commercial.
A number of TV shows including JTBC’s TV show “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator” has also been made into a VR version as well.
Content is what matters
The government has been paying keen attention to the VR technology, tapping it as the next growth engine for Korea.
The two control towers governing the VR industry ― the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIFP) fostering the technology and Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism developing the content ― have been announcing a slew of policies.
The MSIFP announced last week the Digital Content Flagship Project, which will inject 185 billion won in aspiring businesses to foster the convergence between culture and information technology, notably virtual reality and a 270-degree Cinerama-like ScreenX by 2018.
“A new lens called VR is changing the whole way of looking at the world,” said Choi Jae-you, second vice minister of science and future planning. “The VR industry, the annual growth of which is estimated at over 10 percent and will reach $150 billion market by 2020, is still in its infancy.”
To gain the upper hand in the industry, the growth of which can be shared with other industries, Choi said all the players should gather forces to develop content, platforms, networks and devices together.
On Wednesday, the Culture Creation and Convergence Belt under the wing of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism opened the Creative Economy Leader (CEL) Academy that aims to nurture talented people who can make killer VR content.
The academy will financially support those creators who will carry out projects with professors and field experts who possess convergence-oriented creative knowledge.
The ministry said that developing content is a prerequisite to bringing in the VR age.
“As much as we need more affordable VR devices, we need rich VR content. Not just killer content, either, but a vast amount of content created by those in diverse areas,” said Im Sang-kuk, an analyst at Hyundai Securities. “VR will grow hand in hand with AR in the end. Because, they are in the early stages, we should approach them from a long term perspective.”