Virtual Reality – Dear Earth

The Gardener An Augmented Reality Experience by Di Mainstone ©Di Mainstone

Act Now, Architecture, Art, Augmented Reality, Car-free, Change, Cities, City, Climate, Climate Emergency, Future, Sustainability, Virtual Reality, Wellness

A Garden Walk in Augmented Reality

For the past six months, Design Exchange has been collaborating with the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw to bring the Garden Walk to the streets of London and to create an interactive AR experience. But what is the Garden Walk and how can new media art students in Poland, during a pandemic, create something on the streets of London? The answer, AR. Together with tutors and a group of seven students an AR experience was created and tested using SparkAR to bring to life Design Exchange’s vision of a re-wilded London: stretching from Spitalfields to Oxford Street via Rondo ONZ.

What would London look like if its streets were ripped up and ploughed if car parks became arboretums? And how can students in Warsaw help create a greener London? These were some of the questions posed at the beginning of the collaboration. While we didn’t fully realise or answer all of them, the results that were produced are maybe more inventive.

One of the main sources of inspiration was a lecture by the artist Di Mainstone (feature image) Who during a keynote presentation introduced the students to her Gardener character. An otherworldly being that spreads herbaceous love wherever it goes. With this in mind, the students hunkered down to explore how they could create something that equally inspires. Research was carried out into inspirational female environmentalists like the Polish ecologist Simona Kossak. The project, however, was destined to take a more abstract approach. And it was this deviation from the human that proved to be the most inspiring for the students.

During the research phase the students were asked to think about the two cities. What was it that made them unique? How could their histories influence their rewilding? When asked how they felt about Warsaw the students said “hope”. Hope, because it has had a very traumatic history yet has still managed to keep its identity; even after having been wiped off the map during the Second World War. From hope the students came up with the image of a phoenix, rising from the ashes to inspire people.

While the phoenix is associated with fire, this time it’s all about nature. Sketches were made and tested to see how a lush green phoenix could be created. One that appears on the streets of London and spreads nature wherever it flies. The hope from Warsaw, in the guise of a phoenix, will appear on the streets of London sometime soon. This wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing potential of Augmented Reality.

Using Blender and Substance Painter software the students created the 3D models that would be put into SparkAR. The students Anastasiya Razhkova, Maksym Tsylia and Mikita Gerasimchik worked on the phoenix to bring it to life. But you’ll have to wait until 2022 to see it flying over London.

The collaboration also researched how AR could be more fully integrated into a print magazine. More to come on this in the future. But for now, imagine AR portals to content and interactive relationships between realities. The students working on this are Oles Samko, Nadzeya Dubik, Fanny Demier and Mariia Pshenychna. This collaboration was overseen by the tutors Aleksandra Hojszyk and Josh Plough.

This collaboration is in progress and will be fully realised next year.

“It was a complete pleasure for Design Exchange to work on this project with Josh, Aleksandra and all the students at The Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology there has already been plans to collaborate again in 2022 with some of the students involved“

Josh Plough, Tutor at The Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology “We would like to thank Design Exchange for the opportunity to work on such a project.”

Eclipse Image assets created by Zion König for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse 2021

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Serpentine Looks To The Digital Future Of Cultural Institutions

Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse (FAE2) is the second volume of the Serpentine’s annual strategic briefing providing concepts, references, language and arguments towards the construction of 21st-century cultural infrastructure.

FAE2 focuses on the need to rethink digital strategy in the post-pandemic era if art institutions are to find a place in the evolving ‘metaverse(s)’ and support artists working in this sphere. Published on 6 July as a free PDF and limited edition book, FAE2 is produced in collaboration with Rival Strategy and Luke Caspar Pearson, Guest Producer.

The advent of the metaverse – an always-online, persistent, spatial ‘second’ world most commonly associated with multiplayer online games like Fortnite and Animal Crossing – is driven by video game technologies such as game engines, and a spectrum of enabling technologies including motion capture, AI, immersive hardware and 5G as well as blockchain and the recent explosion of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). While not a new concept, the metaverse nevertheless represents a fundamental shift in our notion of digital infrastructure and presence, requiring a new set of technological and organisational capabilities from the cultural sector.

FAE2 argues that cultural institutions need to be devising well-informed strategies at a sector-wide level shaping current and future spaces for artistic experimentation and social interaction, offering a new framework for defining ‘digital’ in relation to organisations’ individual missions and capabilities. It also describes the models that exist in art adjacent fields (indie games, blockchain, film and architecture) to support artists working with metaverse technologies.

Mountain_Lake Image created for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse , 2021. Snow Mountain by 3d_molier International on TurboSquid, 3D Model License — Mountain_Lake Image created for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse , 2021. Snow Mountain by 3d_molier International on TurboSquid, 3D Model

FAE2 draws on the learnings from Serpentine’s process of ‘digital transformation’ as well as learnings from across the cultural sector; on-going conversations with a broad network of peers across art, gaming, technology and policy, plus dedicated interviews with cutting edge practitioners such as Alex Fleetwood, game designer, creative director and entrepreneur, artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, Trevor McFedries (creator of virtual pop star, Lil Miquela), Sam Rolfes, (artist and director of the Lady Gaga music video ‘Sour Candy’) and leading figures from the sector including Dr Jo Twist OBE (CEO, Association for UK Interactive Entertainment) and Gabrielle Jenks (Digital Director, Manchester International Festival).

As part of Serpentine’s commitment to supporting the construction of future art ecosystems, the Serpentine will be releasing Legal Lab Report 1: Art + Tech/Science Collaborations, on 26 July. This report documents the Lab’s findings from the survey and interview-based research conducted over 18 months with over 250 artists, curators, technologists, scientists, cultural institutions, galleries, funders, tech companies, legal academics and lawyers. In collaborations across art and technology, and art and science, numerous frictions or ‘pain points’ caused by legal issues that collaborators may face. This report aims to share knowledge, identify opportunities and the way that that resonates with collaborators and empowers them to make better use of legal tools. The production of the report was led by Alana Kushnir, lawyer, curator and founder of Guest Work Agency with Victoria Ivanova, Serpentine’s R&D Strategic Lead in collaboration with legal innovation by design agency Amurabi.

Image created for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse ,2021. Beech Tree Collection (Fagus Sylvatica) by jimd on TurboSquid, 3D Model License — Image created for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse ,2021. Beech Tree Collection (Fagus Sylvatica) by jimd on TurboSquid, 3D Model

“The global health emergency compels us to reflect on and evaluate existing paradigms of art institutional digital departments. Future Art Ecosystems builds on Serpentine’s support of artist-led experimentation with advanced technologies through artist commissions and research. As we rethink digital strategy for a post-pandemic world, Serpentine is proud to be part of a constellation of organisations committed to building bridges between art, science, technology and policy. This latest edition of FAE explores the metaverse as a rich platform for these intersections and the important innovations that will continue to be born from them.” Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, and Bettina Korek, Chief Executive, Serpentine.

“There are over a million people watching a Twitch live stream at any given second. People in the cultural arts space don’t know about it, and the people on Twitch don’t care” Amelia Winger-Bearskin

“I’ve never heard of an art gallery building a game engine.” Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

“Who is the metaverse for? Who gets to be a part of that metaverse? And who gets to decide? Who gets to build the technology, and who gets to deliver on those digital pieces of land? We need policy. We need interdisciplinary approaches to how we build a safer internet.” The Immersive Kind

Launch Event for Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse
13 July 17:00-18-00 BST
Live on Twitch @serpentineuk
RSVP

Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead, and Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies, present the findings and insights from the report and answer audience questions.

Launch Event for Legal Lab Report 1: Art + Tech/Science Collaborations

26 July 2021 11:30-12:30 BST
Live on Twitch @serpentineuk
RSVP

Join Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead, Alana Kushnir, Legal Lab Principal Investigator, and Marie Potel-Saville, founder of Amurabi, for a discussion on the findings and action points.

Serpentine Podcast: Playtesting

Released 16 July
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Two specially conceived episodes of the Serpentine Podcast will be released alongside FAE2. These podcasts invite incredible artists, technologists and thinkers to share their insights, methodologies and working practices with advanced and emerging technologies and virtual worldbuilding. From building counter archives, datasets and repositories for liberation, to working with antecedent frameworks, together we embrace more decentralised, community-focused and emancipatory visions for the future. Presented by Tamar Clarke-Brown and produced in collaboration with Reduced Listening.

Serpentine x arebyte present: Skills for Future Art Ecosystems

Serpentine and arebyte Gallery partner to bring you a series of technical workshops focused on artmaking in the metaverse. Each workshop, led by an artist, will offer participants the opportunity to learn and create live with a group of 20 other participants.

Interaction 101 with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley 24 July

Dynamic Environments in Unity with Christopher MacInnes 18 Aug

Metahuman production with Keiken 19 September

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Twelve Screens Broadcast Digital Content on the front of EP7

A collaboration between Brawhaus and the restaurant, space and bar EP7 Paris opens a digital art exhibition showing 20 different digital artists from around the world until 3rd July 2021. This includes some work by Design Exchange’s ‘CHANGE‘ edition cover designer and motion designer / experimental filmmaker Dirk Koy and many others.

The 12 screen facade is a digital showcase that, throughout the day, displays the works of the digital artists. Located in the heart of the bnf district in Paris the EP7 digital and gourmet tavern is built on 3 platforms with hybrid and unique architecture.

The brains behind collective Brawhaus also present Offgrid a virtual reality experience that allows you to submerge yourself into a fantastical alternate universe and interact with people space and art. A virtual place designed to connect people in a socially distant world. Check it out

Animation, Art, Art films, Augmented Reality, City, Culture, Film, Filmmaking, Nature, Projects, science, Technology, Virtual Reality

The Four Temperaments

Italian-Canadian director and video installation artist, Mario Brambilla’s contribution to this year’s exhibition, Unreal City, London’s largest augmented reality exhibition to date, is an immersive experiment of human emotion and the need to be loved.

“The Four Temperaments”, is inspired by the Greek philosopher, Galen’s theory of four distinct personalities found within humans, which Brambilla introduces at the beginning of the film as Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic, and Melancholic. Each of the Four Humors is a character, denoted by a specific colour of lighting cast on Cate Blanchett, the actor playing all four roles. Within only two lines of dialogue – “I love you” and “I don’t love you” – Brambilla seeks to explore the range of drama, emotional impact and human connection a limited set of dialogue can be imbued with.

The short film is a companion piece to the video installation made for Unreal City, and presents the Four Humors in a quadriptych, highlighting the subtleties of layered emotion Blanchett expresses within the limited but powerful dialogue. As the film progresses, repetition and the layering of voices creates an emotional dimension in hopes of exploring the various ways in which personal struggle, needs and desires shape the way we love and use the promise of love to impact others.

The installation itself is available for everyone to view through the Acute Art app, which breaks the conventional format of the screen and occupies the space around the viewer by placing Blanchett’s Four Humors into floating coloured crystal balls. Blanchett looks the viewer in eye as the installation unfolds, engaging directly in the emotional impact of words and establishing an intrinsic human connection. With this, the viewer becomes an active participant within the unfolding drama. Brambilla’s use the medium of augmented reality develops a mode of storytelling where the observer becomes a contributor, arising new questions of how we create and consume visual art and for whom.

3D Printing, Art, Change, Culture, Dance, Music, Technology, Virtual Reality

The Rules Do Not Apply: New Commissions by Digital Artists

National Gallery X and Royal Opera House Audience Labs unveil three new commissions from groundbreaking digital artists responding to the new realities of our rapidly changing world

National Gallery X and The Royal Opera House’s Audience Labs, are delighted to announce The Rules Do Not Apply: three ambitious, boundary stretching digital artworks by talented new artists, Dennis Osadebe, a Nigerian mixed-media artist best known for his contemporary vibrant post-pop style; Fantasia Malware, a collective that makes fantastical, magical, corrupt, chaotic software, and Maf’j Alvarez, a digital media artist and creative technologist based in Brighton who creates collaborative and interactive immersive artworks, that seek to challenge existing power structures. The three artworks have just launched online

Inspired by the immense uncertainty and flux that is now a feature of our daily lives, National Gallery X, which is dedicated to exploring how technology can transform cultural experiences, and Audience Labs, the Royal Opera House artist-led innovation programme, were keen to investigate how the Covid pandemic could also provide a catalyst for reflection and change. They challenged artists to come up with imaginative responses to our ‘new normal’ taking as their inspiration two powerful works of art that reimagine and disrupt structures of power and play with the unexpected. They are:

Eve, 2018: A piece of choreography by Kristin McNally about a female dancer emerging into a digital world, exploring how to make and remake, realising her power of creation free from the constraints of the real world.
Paula Rego, Crivelli’s Garden, 1990-91: A large-scale triptych in the National Gallery collection chosen to reflect ideas of transformation and empowerment in Eve. Rego’s painting appropriates the strict linear perspective of 15th-Century painter Carlo Crivelli’s house and garden and reimagines the space to explore the narratives of women in biblical history and folklore found in various paintings across the National Gallery.

In response to The Rules Do Not Apply, Dennis Osadebe has explored Nigerian heritage, advancing technologies, and collaboration to construct an innovative experience that invites the viewer to discover their role as both instigators and witnesses within the powerful transformation of a shifting digital scene. In his unique signature style and fascination with interior spaces, Osadebe has generated a virtual room that draws inspiration from the linear perspective of Renaissance paintings, akin to the style of Paula Rego’s Crivelli’s Garden (1990-1). The objects occupying the space also signal the influence of Rego’s historically rooted work, as we find symbolic relationships through symbols of statues, references to childhood, performance, and mythology.

Fantasia Malware responded to the brief with their work The Life of Saint Fiona Bianco Xena, which tells the hotly disputed story of the fictitious saint’s life. Multiple interpretations of key moments in Saint Fiona’s life are presented in a hyper-chromatic, unholy panorama – a maelstrom of figures, stories and symbols occurring on different timelines, dimensions and scales. An elderly woman with red painted cheeks cradles a wounded child tenderly to her breast, mother of the motherless. A crystal-eyed robot holds a bouquet of roses, a cigarette hanging roughly from her lips. A thick-thighed girl with a long green braid kicks and pirouettes, taking impossible leaps in the night sky. Saint Fiona is a kaleidoscopic vision of one woman seen through three rotating eyes, an illusion of separated light scattering in different directions. The work is a comment on how the stories of women in the public eye are retold, twisted, mutated and used as a projection screen for the exorcising of current social and cultural demons.

Maf’j Alvarez imagines entering a surrealist painting using VR in her piece Eva Quantica, a dreamlike bubble of lockdown Brighton as an open world to explore the various simultaneous selves of Eve. Hands for hills, a cupcake pavilion, platforms, statues, depictions of people and the glowing lifeforce surging through everything. Maf’j’s piece is about female power, patriarchy, immigration, tradition and obligation. She explores technology as an agent of power for women and its consequences and wants to challenge the rules that always apply. The commission is experimental and explores embodiment with motion capture, she says “My ability to be creatively, financially and technologically independent is both liberating and frightening due to the obligation like Eve, to do something with it that is meaningful and impactful whilst nourishing and protecting myself and my family.”

Annette Mees, Audience Labs, The Royal Opera House says, “we are really excited about the possibilities of this commission, we have two very different starting points with Eve and Rego’s Crivelli’s Garden, both of which have emerged from a long artistic tradition. To see them being re-invented by three vastly different contemporary artists, three very different points of view, it’s thrilling, this is new art.

Lawrence Chiles, Head of Digital Services at the National Gallery, says, “the collaboration between the Royal Opera House’s Audience Labs and National Gallery X came about as a response to the times, where there was a greater need and appetite for digital culture. The Rules Do Not Apply commission is a powerful illustration of how NGX is alive and open to new artistic possibilities”.

Act Now, Art, Art films, Augmented Reality, Avatar, Biotechnology, Cities, City, Climate, Climate Emergency, Community, Culture, Design, Filmmaking, Future, Materials, Music, Nature, News, science, Sound, Sustainability, Virtual Reality, Wellness

Festival of New Cinema, Digital Culture and Art

Abandon Normal Devices Festival, the UK’s only roaming digital festival, resurfaces in 2021 with a new hybrid format, exploring the post-industrial landscapes of the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey. The nomadic festival of digital culture, art and film returns for an expanded summer edition over seven weeks from 27 May – 11 July 2021, online and at sites in Merseyside and Cheshire (UK).

AND Festival 2021 will bring you on an extraordinary journey responding to the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey, streaming via waterways and cables lying deep beneath the waves. Following the flows of shipping, energy and political power structures, from container ports on our doorsteps to the depths of the ocean floor; through ecosystems bound up with industrial chemicals, minerals and microplastics, to their effects on our planet, human and non-human bodies.

Ever migrating, adapting and evolving, AND Festival will take place online, on docklands and on the water in 2021. This ambitious programme will feature in-real-life field trips via augmented reality seascapes, immersive voyages and floating laboratories, expanded through an online programme of radical and disruptive artworks, film screenings, performances, talks and workshops. AND Festival returns in a renewed experimental, cross-platform format from 27 May 2021 for seven weeks.

AND Festival 2021 invites radical artists, critical thinkers and curious audiences to renavigate the industrial landscape from physical and virtual perspectives. Exploring the global trade gateway of the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey, the programme will bring into focus the oceanic scale of networked industries and infrastructures – largely hidden from sight – that form part of our daily contemporary consumption. Audiences local and remote are invited to trace the entangled flows of shipping routes, oil refineries, chemical industries, recycling plants and energy systems from these ports, and unearth the impact on our ways of living.

In a unique year when the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe, we have witnessed far-reaching adaptations to our lives; the 9th edition of AND Festival is reimagined for a world beyond this stasis, adapted from the postponed 2020 festival into an experimental programme traversing physical and digital worlds.

For 2021, AND is pleased to reveal five new commissions with international artists and partners:

The Blue Violet River – Anita Fontaine

Step aboard the iconic Mersey Ferry to inhabit a fantasy-fiction world exploring an evolved reality brought about by climate change, rising sea levels and tropical climates. Psychedelic audio-visual sculptures explode from land and water, and the Mersey skyline playfully shapeshifts revealing a surreal alternate reality of the urban landscape in this augmented reality (AR) work, which playfully envisions a peaceful future vision of evolved humanity. From the river’s intercontinental trade to the regular blooms of moon jellyfish drawn in by tidal currents, our post-industrial perspective of the River Mersey warps in this future-forward techno fantasy.

WetLab – public works + Assembly

This floating laboratory, using the canal network as a site as well as a subject, will create an opportunity for discussion and exploration, serving as a spark to imagine future uses of living on and around water. Sited at National Waterways Museum, WetLab will host playful experiments, workshops and cross-disciplinary discussions.

The canal-based pavilion, designed by critical design practice public works, will tour sites across Greater Manchester and Lancashire after launching in Cheshire for AND Festival 2021, becoming a hub for innovative learning, discussion, and engagement on the waterways

Toxicity’s Reach – Mary Maggic, Dr Luiza Prado and Sissel Marie Tonn

From microplastics to pharmaceuticals and fertilizers, chemical cocktails contaminate waterways, eroding environmental and public health. When we cook our meals, wash our clothes, empty our sinks, drink water and use beauty products, we contribute to polluted ecosystems. As humans, we are entangled with the very environments we seek to live with, from and in.

Through three newly commissioned online artworks by artists, Mary Maggic, Dr Luiza Prado, and Sissel Marie Tonn, and an accompanying body of research, online exhibition Toxicity’s Reach radically traces some of the ways in which contaminants affect our lives in unexpected ways. How might a reimagination of toxic worlds make us think differently about our daily actions and envision other ways of being?

By The Sound of Things – Kate Davies

By the Sounds of Things is an immersive audiovisual experience onboard the unique steam-powered, Mersey-built boat, The Daniel Adamson (The Danny). From the deck of one of the last surviving Manchester Ship Canal tugs, the audience is invited to feel the vast echoes and epic scale of the modern shipping industry and consider the extent and impact of our insatiable consumerism on local and global environments. This hypnotic binaural sound work tells the story of the journey of a container as it travels from the surface to the bottom of the ocean, whilst an accompanying film focusing on the world above water presents a collision of the extraordinary and the banal that defines the image of global sea trade – an absurd narrative of ordinary things.

One-Fifth Of The Earth’s Surface – Hakeem Adam and Maxwell Mutanda

A conversation between artists Hakeem Adam, Maxwell Mutanda and the Atlantic Ocean, One-Fifth of the Earth’s Surface is presented as an interactive audio-visual landscape and explorative online experience that unearths the power of water as a dynamic and fluid archive.

The project offers multiple readings of the unpredictable transatlantic waters as an evolving structure that initiates change on its surrounding lands, rerouting power and reshaping the lives of all who depend on it. This web-based artwork serves as an experimental route for users to read various digital drawings each offering and responding to a specific theme connected to the Atlantic Ocean, a body of water covering one-fifth of the Earth’s surface.

Hakeem Adam. Image ©Street Level Photoworks

Artists presenting work in the festival include: Hakeem Adam (GH), Assembly (UK), Marija Bozinovska Jones (MK), Kate Davies (UK), Anita Fontaine (AU), Mary Maggic (CN/US), Maxwell Mutanda (ZW), New Emergences (NL), Ignatia Nilam Agusta (ID), Dr Luiza Prado (BR), public works (UK) and Sissel Marie Tonn (DK), plus more to be announced.

AND Director Ruth McCullough says:

“This edition of AND Festival emerges with a renewed vision and format for connection in our altered world. We’re excited to explore this extraordinary post-industrial landscape with artists and audiences locally and across the globe, making a space for radical reflection and urgent debate around our global ecosystems. Abandon your normal devices and join us on this journey.”

AND Creative Director Luke Moody says:

“After a year of navigating shifting horizons, this May AND will open a virtual portal to a festival that traces the scars of an industrial past with magical mirrors of the present and portals to possible futures. How do we experience art in a unique place without the possibility of bodily presence? How do we connect to a landscape and a community without being there? The art of unknowing is something we embrace as a festival and with our audiences; to try and fail, to experiment and unlearn, share and question.”

Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey Thu 27 May – Sun 11 July 2021

Further details on the programme will be released over the coming months. Visit andfestival.org.uk/signup and sign up to AND e-news for programme announcements.

Featured Inside Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. Photo ©Danny Lawson

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Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is extended

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience in York Extended until 6 June 2021

The projectors may have been turned off for the third national lockdown, but the team behind the popular York attraction have promised that the lights will stay on a little longer – visitors will now have until 6 June 2021 to immerse themselves in over 200 of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings.

“We have been drawing visitors from all over the country and beyond, and ticket holders have been incredibly understanding about the changing arrangements – fully open, restricted to certain tiers, closed – and are happy to rearrange their visits for a later date, but with our planned closure at the end of February, many were disappointed that they might miss out, particularly with the new lockdown announced” comments Mario Iacampo, creative director. “We’re delighted to confirm that we’ll be extending the exhibition until 6 June 2021 – which incorporates the Easter holiday and takes us through the May bank holiday weekends to the end of the Spring half term.”

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience opened for the first time in the UK in July 2019 in York St Mary’s, a former church turned arts centre in the Coppergate Centre, next to JORVIK Viking Centre. Visitors enjoy a 35 minute show, projected onto the pillared walls and floor of the building’s nave, featuring over 200 of Van Gogh’s most famous works, animated and set to music. From swaying wheat fields to falling cherry petals, a gallery of portraits and still life paintings and even a remarkable rain storm, visitors are immersed in the artworks, reflecting different periods in Van Gogh’s life.

“The last year has been so disrupted and disorientating for so many people, but this immersive experience has been designed to offer an almost Zen-like calm amongst viewers – many comment that they find themselves relaxed or even overcome by emotion during the projections – so we do have a lot of repeat visitors, who use the time as an escape from the everyday world,” adds manager, Evie Blackstock. “After weeks or potentially months of lockdown, we’re sure they will be very happy with the additional three months’ extension.”

Visitors’ own artistic skills are challenged in a ‘mindfulness’ colouring area, where colouring sheets featuring outlines of famous artworks are provided, and completed pictures are projected onto the wall in a digital gallery. An optional 11 minute virtual reality experience completes the visit – taking visitors on a tour of Arles, the village where Van Gogh spent much of his later life, and which inspired a host of his artworks, including the stunning Starry Night on the Rhone.

Opening times from February are likely to be 10am to 4pm (last admissions), with extended opening hours during the school holidays. Tickets cost £13 for adults, £11 for concessions and £9 for children, with an additional charge of £3 per person for the optional Virtual Reality experience. Tickets can be prebooked at vangoghexpo.co.uk/york