Christian Möller, Maurizio Seracini: The Third Dimension of “Ritratto di Gentiluomo”

 
  • ©,

Artist(s):


Collaborators:


Title:


    The Third Dimension of "Ritratto di Gentiluomo"

Exhibition:


Creation Year:


    1996

Category:


Keywords:


Artist Statement:


    This installation, the product of a collaboration with the Italian scholar Maurizio Seracini, focuses on visualizing the different layers of Ritratto di Gentiluomo. Through X-ray and infrared technology, the otherwise invisible sketches and grounding behind the surface of the painting are made visible.

    The visualization system used in the SIGGRAPH 96 art show relies on an enormous touch screen specially developed for this purpose. As far as we know, the system, developed in England, is the largest analog ­resistive touch screen available worldwide.

    Using a high-resolution data projector, Ritratto di Gentiluomo is back-project ed onto the touch screen at its original size, so visitors see it as a virtual replica of the original. By touching the screen, visitors can erase one layer of painting after another. They can proceed backward in time through the layers of the painting or “paint back in” some of the areas in the paint­ing that have been “erased”.

    Viewers navigate their way through the third dimension of the picture and create a seam­less and unique pictorial collage of a major work of 16th-century art, without ad­ding anything to it that was not already present in the original.

Sponsors:


    Goethe Institute Houston

    German Cultural Center

Other Information:


    Programming
    Edith Spiegl

    On loan from
    J.E. Weidinger