The Slav Epic Immersive is an interactive and theatrical digital environment that uses real-time visual effects and motion-tracking technologies to bring audiences into the world of Mucha’s epic painting cycle.
All twenty of Mucha’s grand Slav Epic paintings are represented at close to 1:1 scale within a high resolution projection-mapped environment. Each painting has been spatially analysed and then mapped in 3D to allow for naturalistic and compelling visual movement through the narrative works.
These digital interventions have been designed to follow and deepen Mucha’s figurative and narrative compositional strategies. Guided movements and animations through the paintings follow the conventions of gesture and pictorial space that Mucha employed in his storytelling.
The system integrates cinematic narrative sequences with real-time interactions, compiled in a video game engine. Four paintings are shown at any one time in the space. One painting ‘activates’ for 60 seconds, before being exchanged for the next image in the sequence.
Each activation follows a cinematic motion path, drawing viewers into the narrative space of each work. These activations are accompanied by a specially-commissioned instrumental and choral score, composed in response to key figures and cultural and aesthetic motifs and in consideration of Mucha’s relationships with contemporary Slavic composers.
The Immersive space is constantly motion-tracked in order to respond to viewer behaviours and movements. While a particular work is activated, and as viewers move through the space, the location and change in grouping of viewers triggers spatially-contextual visual effects in the three other works they engage in real-time.
These user-generated effects include the highlighting of characters, spatial animations and theatrical lighting effects. Significantly, the selection of available effects is contextual and based on the currently-activated work, in order to draw aesthetic and narrative links between works in the cycle. As such, no two viewers can ever have the same exact experience of the Slav Epic Immersive.
The Slav Epic Immersive was commissioned for the exhibition Alphone Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 June – 22 September 2024.
Project Director and Lead Artist: Andrew Yip
Music Director and Composer: Gary Daley
Sound Designer and Audio Engineers: Oliver Miller
Musicians: Garey Daley (keyboards and piano accordion) and Oliver Miller (cello)
Choral Director: Mara Kiek
Choral Performers: Martenitsa Choir
Choral Soloist: Silvia Entcheva
Choral Coordinator: Llew Kiek
Immersive Systems Engineer: Rafael Formosa
Assistant Immersive Designer: Solveig Johnston