THE SUN
The Sun is a meditative VR experience based on the series of paintings called ‘The Sun’ by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.
It is one episode in the 3-part VR series ‘The Master’s Vision’, produced by gebrüder beetz filmproduktion.
The 360° version is available on the Arte website and ARTE360 app in English, German, and French.
Exhibitions:
Sept 2018 - Bergen International Film Festival, Bergen, Norway
March 2019 - CPH:DOX Interactive, Copenhagen, Denmark
July 2019 - Virtual Worlds, Munich, Germany
Summer 2019 - Munch Centre, Løten, Norway
Directors
Mike Robbins & Harmke Heezen,
High Road Stories
Producer
Georg Tschurtschenthaler,
gebrüder beetz filmproduktion
Co-producer
Kristian Mosvold,
Øya Interaktiv
Distributor
Lucid Realities
Moving towards the light
It’s early morning, just before dawn, somewhere on the cold Norwegian coast. The water is lapping at the rocky shoreline. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, the sun rises and bathes the landscape in a warm morning glow. The night is gone, winter has melted away.
Edvard Munch is known for his dark and moody paintings, most famously The Scream. But when he returned to Kragerø, on the Norwegian coast, after a period of depression, he created a energetic, colorful series of images of the rising sun, the source of all life.
The Sun as a mural in Oslo’s university aula.
Munch was fascinated with light and the effect that it has on our eyes and brain. Can we see beyond the physical limits of our eyes?
Building on his curiosity for science and spirituality, the second part of the experience becomes psychedelic. A series of abstract, colourful sun ray shaped figures are shown, with space in between for you to see the effects your own eyes create: after images.
The room scale version of this VR experience goes a step further: you will find yourself in a completely blank space, with pink noise on your headphones. After a while, the ‘Ganzfeld Effect’ (aka prisoner’s cinema) may occur: when the brain does not get any audiovisual input, it starts creating its own stories.
As it turns out, the music of “An Alpine Symphony” by Richard Strauss fits perfectly as a soundtrack for the sunrise. Munch and Strauss wrote to each other often and shared a fascination with light and scientific experiments.
At the Bergen International Film Festival and CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, the audience was invited to draw their hallucinations on pieces of paper, that were hung on the walls of the exhibition spaces.
