I had a spontaneous opportunity to see the rather popular Van Gogh immersive experience that is touring the country. It was pretty cool (that's my deeply considered, intricately reasoned opinion). The entire experience takes just shy of an hour. I suspect the installations may vary in their processes. In Houston where I was, you are ushered into a large room, roughly the size of the gymnasium and are seated on the floor on cushions or, if your entry is well timed, on one of a handful of benches scattered about the room. You can get a feel for it from the website.
Various famous Van Gogh paintings are given subtle and quite lovely animations then projected onto the walls so you feel surrounded by the paintings. The motion is gentle and the details of the paintings really get highlighted well. Of course it is set to music which ranges from ambient to lo-fi to pseudo-classical. Photography is encouraged, and the result is a room full of backlit people shaped images angling the brightly colored screens to get brief snippets of videos. The net effect is to almost embed the audience in the animated presentations of the paintings. Like I said, it's pretty cool. Certainly worth a trip if it comes to your neck of the woods. (It's been in Detroit, but I don't go to Detroit.)
I would love to see more of these sorts of shows. Even more interesting would be to embed them in commercial areas. There is a tunnel in the Detroit Metro Airport that connects terminals wherein they try to pump calming music and have a '70s era light show. One of these installations would be much cooler. Or better yet, how about a bar/restaurant. It would beat the hell out of having a crummy guitar player with synthesized back-up. I hereby copyright that idea. Hit me up if you want to buy the rights.
