How can immersive media be used to translate a concept from 19th century Impressionism into the digital age?

What began as a thesis project explores a concept first coined during the Impressionist movement: enveloppe. It was described by Claude Monet in his letters while working on his Cathedral series as the quality of evenly distributed light that stands between the subject and the painter. This project aimed to reinterpret the idea of the enveloppe using digital technologies, bringing together the heritage of a painting movement and contemporary immersive media.

Exploring data visualisation for virtual reality and projection mapping, the project was developed by employing photogrammetry, 3D modelling, point cloud generation and motion design to depict a digital approximation of Monet's enveloppe. Several prototypes were developed to visualise image data from the Cathedral series, culminating in a VR short film that was presented during my thesis dissertation at Bauhaus University in Summer of 2020.

In 2023, this work was expanded into a video installation that forms part of the exhibition for the second edition of Yadegar Asisi's The Cathedral of Monet Panorama. The data visualisation for this installation is a result of processing Asisi's digitised painting of the cathedral. Now on display at the Panometer Leipzig, the installation offers an immersive interpretation of the concept first depicted on canvas over a century ago.