Step into ukiyo-e art
Clever people these Japanese. A few hundred years ago they developed a style of priinting that specialized in pictures of natural places and events that everyday people would be familiar with. Each color of each picture was hand carved into a large wooden block and then coated with the appropriate color ink and pressed on to the paper for display. A tremendously painstaking and tedious process. The specialized was to give folks a way to relax and lose themselves in the scenery and experience their personal emotions that came from the picture’s memories. A big part of what makes Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print artwork so compelling is its sense of place. Whether it’s depicting a crowded street in Edo (back before the city was renamed Tokyo), a post road or pilgrimage path with a view of Mt. Fuji, or a kabuki actor on stage, ukiyo-e function as painted snapshots of life in old Japan. The very best ukiyo-e make you feel like you could step inside of them, and that sort of artistic whimsy is at the heart of the newly opened Ukiyoe Immersive Art exhibition.
That was then, this is now. Apple and others have tried very hard to sell 3D headsets that would block outside vision and hearing so that you could experience a 3-D movie with sound effects and not be encumbered by your other senses (like balance, motion or space). The general public has not been enthusiastic about losing their senses for a computer generated trip that may cause motion sickness and even paranoia. Our friends in Japan have taken the great art of yesteryear and teamed it with today’s technology to give museum visitors some of the great experiences without losing touch with reality around them.
Basically they have made gigantic copies of the classic pictures and put them in 3D juxtaposition so that you feel you are literally in the room with the fighting ninjas or experiencing to boiling sea in a storm. They have even come up with a circular cone shaped mirror that they can project the still pictures and on to and then move the pictures as you watch. The effect is that the walls and ceiling are all part of the painting and the viewer is literally in the picture. So above the viewer and on three sides they feel they are in the picture and the experience while still consciously standing on the familiar museum floor. Very much like surround theater, but 3 simultaneous screens, with the classic Japanese touch.
Art innovations
How do you get an art major off your front porch?
Pay for the pizza!
Modern art is like money.
I don’t get it.
Why did the console gamer get a headache at the art museum?
Too many frames.
A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She walked around to look at the artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”
August 16th Birthdays
1998 – Piper Curta, 1958 – Madonna, 1953 – Kathie Lee Gifford, 1959 – Angela Bassett
1994 – Cameron Monaghan, 1963 – Steve Carrell, 1955 – James Cameron, 1930 – Robert Culp