Step Into Today's Garden of Earthly Delights

Watching a 3D movie in the theater is pretty awesome, aside from the potential negative side-effects and bewildered touching from the person behind you. Despite these minor drawbacks, new technologies are on the path to developing more immersive sensory entertainment.

The Creative Media Centre at the City University of Hong Kong delivers an interactive 3D experience through the state-of-the-art AVIE (Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment). AVIE creates an immersive environment with not only 3-D imaging and sound, but also with cameras that track and respond to human movement and gestures, allowing the audience to participate directly in the 3D experience. The piece chosen for this next level interactive experience is Miao Xiaochun’s 3D animation Microcosm.

Microcosm gives Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights a distinctive modern spin. The triptych is expanded into a nine-panel 3D animation. Ancient allegories that have become obscure to us are replaced with symbols and analogies of the current era. Miao uses digital and computer languages to depict an imaginative world we can understand, but also adds details to create mystery. How would Microcosm feel through an interactive 3D environment? Perhaps the closest bodily experience to a waking dream.

The exhibition will go until May 20th at the Creative Media Centre at City University of Hong Kong.

Check out some images from the animation below:

The Garden Of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, 15th Century.

Miao Xiaochun’s Microcosm

Photo: Miao Xiaochun