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Tonight with the Impressionists

A masterclass in how not to do VR.

I enjoyed seeing how compact and modest the Impressionists’ exhibition was, and how artists like Monet and Degas would’ve been hanging around the rooms and chatting with visitors, even if their non-stop banter quickly became tiresome. This is not a foolish notion: there is a lot of literature about how immersion relies on imaginative or physical embodiment in a world, so if it worked, visitors might genuinely leave the experience with a stronger memory and appreciation of the Impressionists’ era. Some technologists would have you believe that the wide span between “absolute disaster” and “total success” can only be crossed by trying and failing with experiences like Tonight with the Impressionists, thus excusing it as a necessary, noble casualty on the march to perfect immersion, but they are wrong.

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