On a warm, breezy Spring’s day, a brilliantly iridescent dome adorns the Domaine Park of Chaumont-sur-Loire. The futuristic appearance of the installation entitled IN-OUT/ Artificial Paradises 2017 by French digital artist Miguel Chevalier is rather oddly in harmony with the Renaissance château and garden thanks to its reflective exterior mirroring the exuberance of the sunlight and the surrounding greenery.
IN-OUT / Artificial Paradises 2017 spans across at a diameter of 12 metres. The structure is a demi-sphere with a wooden framework, covered in holographic films in order to capture the prismic glory of the Sun.
Visitors are invited to embark on a journey between the real and the virtual garden within the dome, to be transported in an instant to a reality beyond our everyday physical experience. The artist’s generative digital installation Trans-Natures is projected on the curved walls at 360°, reflected by towering mirrors installed around the interior of the dome as well as the glistening black vinyl floor mimicking a visually echoing lake surface. Italian composer and expert in interactive and generative music Jacopo Baboni Schilingi orchestrates in particular a piece of music to compliment the mysterious floral apparitions in the artwork. It is an experience at once meditative and transformative.
IN-OUT / Artificial Paradises 2017 explores the question of the link between nature and artifice as a full-body hypnotic poem. According to the approach prevalent in the late 90s, Chevalier bases this creation on the observation of the munificence of plant life and transposes such abundance into the digital universe. Different species of trees, bushes, twigs, and foliages congregate to form an artificial ecosystem. This virtual biosphere’s structure generates and regenerates ad infinitum abstract arboreal forms in consonance with the algorithm written by Claude Micheli.
The artwork challenges the visitor’s spatial limits. Enveloped by this digital microcosm, the visitor develops a novel sense of distance towards the infinite. From now through to 2 November 2017 at the Domaine of Chaumont-sur-Loire, this vegetal ritual celebrates the beauty of life, an eternal Spring.
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