The art world’s connection with technology is becoming more intertwined, as is evident by the growing number of immersive, interactive and mixed media exhibitions hosted by museums, galleries and event spaces.  

As the fusion of art and technology continues to excite our senses and allow us to view art in new ways, we thought we’d highlight a handful of recent exhibitions that integrated tech to great effect.  

1. Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience  

 Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch post-impressionist painter, is one of the most recognised artists in the Western canon. Gogh’s works are widely known and regularly exhibited at museums and galleries around the world. It therefore makes sense for exhibition organisers and curators to offer a new way for visitors to experience Gogh’s artworks – through a virtual reality lens.  

In this immersive exhibition, virtual projection technology is used to display images and illuminate videos of Gogh’s artworks onto the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery space, creating an ‘incomparable universe’ that envelops the viewer in light, colour and some of the most famous paintings in existence.  

A critically acclaimed exhibition, which has been staged at different venues across North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is now in London.   

2. Dopamine Land  
 
Not so much an exhibition as an experience in an interactive museum, Dopamine Land brings together ‘media, technology and play in one place’. As visitors walk through a series of rooms, a heady array of colours, patterns and animated images fly at you from all angles. Ideal for kids and adults alike, it’s certainly a great place to snap some pictures for your Instagram page before you leave on a happy hormone high.  

3. David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) 
 
Another notable name in the art world, a recent exhibition dedicated to David Hockney made excellent use of multimedia projections to enable visitors to witness familiar artworks in a new light.  

Taking images and videos from various points in Hockney’s long career, the exhibition is divided into six themed chapters. Each chapter explores the various artistic mediums Hockney has involved himself with and highlights his process and the aspects of his craft that matter most to him. 

From powerful audio visuals to animated set designs, not only is it possible to witness multiple perspectives at the same time, but this truly immersive experience almost becomes hallucinatory through the clever use of technology.  

4. Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room 
 
Stepping into avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room is nothing short of transformative. Kusama, a Japanese-born artist who is now in her 90s, translates the profound experiences that have happened in her life through a series of immersive installations. Expect reflective surfaces, thousands of twinkling lights, dark corridors that may lead somewhere or may lead nowhere at all, and much more. Visitors to this exhibition, which has toured the globe, are in for a treat – and an other-worldly experience.  

5. Thin Air – The Beams  

Described as ‘art at the boundaries of light, sound and space’, this exhibition, now closed, used digital technology to effectively showcase the work of seven contemporary artists. The exhibition experimented with new media to make visitors feel as if they were inside the artwork itself.  

The space it inhabited was vast, which was necessary to experience the full effect of large-scale installations, lasers, strobe lights, optical illusions, mirrors, lights, pounding music and seemingly floating objects. If you missed it, you missed a fascinating glimpse into the possibilities of fusing art and technology.