18th Century Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi was famous for his set of etchings titled Carceri (“Prisons”), sometimes referred to as “Carceri d’invenzione“, or “Imaginary Prisons”.
These were architectural fantasies that were more in keeping with grand imaginative stage sets than any real prisons, filled with arches, bridges, sculpture and elaborate stonework.
Artist Grégoire Dupond, working with Factum Arte in Madrid, has taken images from Piranesi’s etchings and projection mapped them to 3-D CGI models and created an animation of the camera moving through the environments, giving you a moving tour through Piranesi’s fantastical srtructures.
Dupond has recreated 6 of Piranesi’s architectural spaces, including the most iconic of them. As the film moves through them Dupond includes clouds of mist or steam as well as projections of Piranesi’s sketchy figures, which take on a ghost like character in the adaptation.
There is an article on the project on the Factum Arte site.
The still screen captures I’ve shown above don’t begin to convey the feeling of moving through these images.
Piranesi Carceri d’invenzione can be viewed on Vimeo.
For more see my previous posts on Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Piranesi’s Prisons: Architecture of Mystery and Imagination.
[Via adamvasaco on MetaFilter]
