One of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces is now – by way of a multimedia artist – an interactive light and sound show that must be touched.
What I know about Vincent Van Gogh: (a) he fictionally appeared in the tenth episode of Doctor Who – season one of the Matt Smith era – (b) he was an immensely talented artist who painted countless inspiring works that now rest in the most renowned galleries across the world and at the Van Gogh Museum located in his birth-country, the Netherlands.
Out of all of Van Gogh’s recognizable pieces – and there sure are aplenty (go Google ‘Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers’ or ‘Sorrowing Old Man’ – amazing paintings both of them) Starry Night has to be tops. Tops I say! Not because it makes for a killer wallpaper for your iPhone – okay, okay, it does – but also for being widely regarded as Van Gogh’s finest creation, of which, I one-hundred percent agree.
Greek multimedia artist Petros Vrellis is right in line with this thinking too, and as it so happens, he recently made a truly clever interactive canvas centered around Van Gogh’s famous painting, which video of is being positively passed around the web like a kickball on a school playground. Vrellis’s self-coded project, using a development toolkit know as OpenFrameworks, puts Starry Night in total motion, and allows for viewers to control certain graphical elements – swirling stars and the like – with their fingers.
The Starry Night interactive canvas also has delightful musical cues with every tug of your digits – making it an ideal visual and sound experience that would be perfect on an iPad or [insert popular tablet competitor here] if Vrellis ever decided to publicly release it to the masses (legal issues might halt that though.) Take a good look of it in marvelous action, it’s simply awesome… and kind of trippy. Whoa.
Don’t leave Walyou just yet folks – you still need to see the Grape64, a sweet portable Nintendo 64 that is, well, purple. Oh and did you know that Mattel – toy makers of Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls – are putting in production for a limited time only the iconic hoverboard used by Marty McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy? Learn about the full details here!
