Paris has been coming at me so fast and furiously for the past 10 days or so that I am struggling to stay on top of my thousands of photos and stories as I engage with this incredible city.  Yesterday I attended a showing at the Atleliers des Luminieres, Fonderie du Chemin-Vert.  Wow.  Pretty cool!

 

 

So, have you heard about these immersive art and music extravaganzas?  The one in Paris uses the same format already devised and shown in the Carrières de Lumières at the old quarries in Les Baux de Provence. (In 2011, the town of Les Baux-de-Provence entrusted Culturespaces with the management of its famous quarry as part of a public services contract. Named “Carrières de Lumières,” it is a fantastic laboratory of creativity: Culturespaces has developed the innovative concept known as AMIEX® [Art & Music Immersive Experience]).  There are similar shows done in an old church in Florence, Italy as well.

The digital exhibitions are made up of thousands of images of digitized works of art, broadcast in very high resolution via fiber optics, and set in motion to the rhythm of music. It takes 140 projectors and a careful orchestration of sound to create an exhibition.

Not everyone in the art world has welcomed this sort of “millennial” approach to the arts; but Culturespaces argue that the target audience for these immersive exhibitions is not connoisseurs of the art world, but rather families and young people who are not used to visiting museums. The Atelier’s first year statistics seem to show the exhibitions are reaching their target: in first year of operation, the Atelier des Lumières welcomed more than one million visitors, 12% of whom were under 25 years of age.