CHICAGO — We live in “the experience culture.”
That’s what David Barbour calls it. He’s editor-in-chief of Lighting & Sound America, the monthly trade publication of the entertainment technology industry. Barbour sees no more conspicuous example of that culture, and our ever-theme-parkier menu of experiences for a price, than the multi-projection exhibits like “Immersive Van Gogh,” one of many Van Gogh attractions now playing around the world. Audiences pay their money for a bone-dry swim in an ocean of digital projections and swirly images from famous paintings accustomed to being still.
“Immersive Van Gogh” recently concluded a two-year run engagement at Chicago’s shrewdly renovated and reconfigured Germania Club Building, built in 1889 and located in Old Town. More than 650,000 people paid to see that exhibit. Now we have the follow-up, also presented by Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago: “Mozart Immersive: The Soul of a Genius,” billed as a “celebration of classical music” and an exploration of the “mind,” “soul” and genius of the Salzburg-born composer.
The idea this time: music first, visuals second, although it’s a toss-up. Proceeding chronologically, creator Massimiliano Siccardi’s latest creation begins with with a dreamy prologue, scored to Mozartian themes floating in a dreamy, high-end-massage soundscape. We see artifacts of an impish genius’ childhood projected on the 35-foot walls all around the largest of the gallery’s rooms: a slingshot, soap bubbles resembling Pandora’s life forms, a wooden puppet leaping through the air.
Moving through his life and environs, “Mozart Immersive” depicts the composer as a boy genius marionette, struggling to break free from the expectations of court life, his father Leopold’s shadow and his own mortality. Strains of his “Don Giovanni,” “The Magic Flute” and other greatest-hits glories fill the room. As a special guest star, Mikhail Baryshnikov makes a wordless cameo as the brooding Leopold, seen walking, as if in a digital trance, surrounded by candles.
Charming? Memorable? Well … it’s assuredly something to look at while listening to bits of “The Marriage of Figaro” and other gems in recorded renditions performed by a 45-piece orchestra conducted by Constantine Orbelian. Though decades of both experimental and mainstream theatergoing have given me some marvelous cutting-edge visual wonders, this was my first immersive attraction from the current trend of cracking open paintings by Kahlo or Klimt, or here, music by Mozart, and giving folks a warm hourlong (or less) bath of aural and visual imagery.
Cheesy or transporting, the trend points to something in the culture right now. Barbour says it relates to “an extraordinary need right now to be taken out of everyday life.”
The following interview with Barbour has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: David, we go back a long way. We’ve seen a couple of generations’ worth of theater using varying degrees of digital images and video and photographic projections, a lot of it brilliant and really striking. Something like “Immersive Mozart” or the Monet or Klimt attractions are different beasts altogether. What do you think they portend for an audience’s expectations?
A: I’d begin by saying the development of projection technology is probably the most significant thing to happen in terms of the design of live events in my roughly 700 years in the industry (laughs). I think it’s great — when it’s used as a tool. It’s really useful in the theater, for all kinds of reasons. Opera and even symphony orchestras are using it to create a visual accompaniment to the music. All of that can be great.
I’m not so happy when the design becomes the experience. That points, I think, to a larger trend in American culture that’s a little bit sad. It’s the experience culture, the idea that unless something’s an enormous, larger-than-life event that takes you out of yourself, then it’s not really all that great.
There’s a book called “The Experience Economy,” which I haven’t read, but it’s been enormously influential on the thinking of many people working in the events industry.
Somehow we’ve gotten to the point where it’s not enough to look at a beautiful painting by Van Gogh, or Monet, and just contemplate it. Now it has to overwhelm you. You have to be taken into it. It’s some kind of extension of something in our culture where everything is entertainment — shopping, church, everything. It may reveal a lack of imagination in our culture today, that it’s no longer enough to see something beautiful and think about it.
Q: I think about how we consume images a lot these days. The “immersive” angle — I really need to find a synonym for that word, since I’m starting to hate it — is no stranger to movies. When you, David, see something as blatantly immersive (sorry) as “Avatar” in 3D, what do you get out of it?
A: Nothing, I’m afraid (laughs). To me, the “Avatar” movies look like something made by Thomas Kinkade, who calls himself the official Painter of Light. I think what’s happening with movies can be looked at as a separate issue. But it isn’t, really. We live in a world where the multiplex is very much the home of James Cameron, Marvel movies and a few other attractions, and movies presumably designed for an adult audience are now, of course, more likely to be on Amazon or Netflix.
In the theater, this idea of immersive technology sort of came in on little cat feet. It started happening on Broadway around 1990, and a lot of it came from (projections designer) Wendall Harrington. She’s always been very clear that projections are supposed to work as a supporting tool, contributing to whatever atmosphere the director wanted to create. Now, though, everyone’s started to think that immersive projections are the quick and easy way to create spectacular designs. And the projections start to become so big and consuming, the actors get lost.
Q: These are apples and oranges, but: If attractions like the Van Gogh or the Mozart immersions continue trending — if you have to find a way to somehow dunk the audience in a pool of digital experience, where do we go from here?
A. Well. I think (attractions like “Mozart Immersive”) are part of an ongoing attempt to attract audiences that wouldn’t typically go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Art Institute of Chicago. I don’t like to make predictions but I have to say, I don’t worry about the theater. Broadway will be whatever Broadway is, which is in a strange way right now. But the younger people making theater now are drawn to it now because they’ve been surfeited with digital culture. The actual live interaction is the thing that makes it for them. And it’s a lot more novel to them than it is to us!
I don’t see the trend toward gigantism stopping anytime soon. It may have something to do with being hooked up to our devices all the time. We want to be taken out of ourselves.
Q. Is “immersion” becoming a code word for something else? Something bigger?
A. I think it means this: We have this extraordinary need right now to be taken out of everyday life. That’s a feature of our culture. I’m not trying to do away with spectacle. Vegas is always going to be there. I love a big musical as much as anybody else. But “immersive” has become the standard for what a great experience means.
And I really don’t understand that.
———
“Mozart Immersive: The Soul of a Genius” continues at Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago at Germania Club, 108 W. Germania Place; tickets $48.97 at mozartimmersive.com.
———
