Andres Montenegro

The Wedding Chamber Installation

Photo showing a student trying out the virtual reality exhibit The Wedding Chamber

The “Pictorial and Virtual simulation of Andrea Mantegna’s Fresco the Wedding Chamber through a mixed reality environment installation,” is a project that has had almost 5 years of development. The constant observation of the device’s manipulation by users, the responses obtained from its computing processes, the efficient access and usability of the head-ups displays within headsets, and the body’s performance as phenomenological mediation between the hardware and the software architecture of the immersive computer program world, are in a study process to obtain significant conclusions about how an immersive interactive installation must be implemented utilizing emerging technologies for visualization in manners that do not rollover to mass media spectacle, or remaining just a curiosity novelty without getting feedback from peers, concerning cultural and academic scrutiny. This article explains the practical implementation of an experience tied to an immersive installation which is essentially incorporating all the required building blocks that emerging technologies possesses, to develop an immersive artwork through “Presence” i.e., the ability of a user to feel that they are in virtual location.

The fundamental goal of this installation was to create the reenactment of “La Camera Degli Sposi,” “Camera Picta,” or known as well as “Wedding Chamber” through a simulated rendition of Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (mixed reality), to study the illusionistic space used by Andrea Mantegna in the real fresco located in Mantua, Italy. This reenactment has been achieved by an install based on a collapsible and portable banners display, keeping the virtual space coordinates and measures, in terms of immersion, following of the original room layout located at the Saint Giorgio Castle in Mantua, Italy. This immersive environment renders a conceptual development of the original fresco painted with mixed traditional media on its walls and ceiling. This interpretation of the real fresco maintains its compositional structure through outlines and color deconstruction, just keeping the factual depiction of the oculus in the ceiling as a full reproduction of the original piece.

The painted elements are associated or glued to a digital content of mixed reality as image targets. Whenever a mobile device or wearable headset device (Microsoft HoloLens, Oculus Quest 2, HTC VIVE, iPad) points at the painted elements (targets) on the walls, they display the holographic configuration of the fresco’ scenes on the screen with fully animated details and enhancing the augmenting experience in HD cinematic realism.

Download the Wedding Chamber Experience VR (Windows only)

This Virtual Reality immersive program requires a VR Ready computer. Most gaming computers based on NVIDIA GeForce RTX Graphics Card would apply. You must install the latest version of the Oculus app and the latest version of the Steam VR app. For the Oculus/Meta system, use the Oculus Link cable, or the Oculus Air feature built in in the Oculus Quest 2 headset, to stream from your VR Ready computer. The Oculus Link/Air will initializes, then start Steam VR to run the exe file (The Wedding Chamber Experience). If your department or school already has a VR system, seek assistance with the administrator or team operating the systems. If you are using HTC VIVE, just run Steam VR first, then it will initialize the VR app. The program will run properly within the range of RTX 2060 to the latest (RTX GeForce 4090).

Directions: Download the ZIP file, decompress it, and placed the folder in your Windows desktop. To run the program, open the folder TheWeddingChamberExperience, and run the file The Wedding Chamber Experience.exe.

Photo of the Wedding Chamber being exhibited at ARTech
Photo of another view of the Wedding Chamber being exhibited at ARTech

Pictorial and Virtual simulation of Andrea Mantegna's fresco The Wedding Chamber through a mixed reality environment installation presented at the Contingency Exhibition, Artech 2021 Conference. Aveiro. Portugal.

Using 2D and 3D interactive animations as an expanded narrative to render the pictorial and virtual simulation of Andrea Mantegna’s fresco The Wedding Chamber through a mixed reality environment installation. Presented at the 6th CAGA Conference “Dimensions of Animation” at the HSLU Hochschule, Luzern. Switzerland

This 20-minute presentation will showcase how 2D and 3D animations are transformed in interactive devices to render an expanded (Gebner, 2019) animated cinematic simulation within an immersive environment that implements Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality technologies. These 2D and 3D animations are part of the XR project Pictorial and Virtual Simulation of Andrea Mantegna’s fresco The Wedding Chamber (Montenegro, 2021). This installation artwork has recently been presented in the Artech Conference 2021 in Aveiro Portugal. Within this immersive experience, the animated narrative is based on the original fresco’s stories, and it is displayed in each of the walls of the virtual immersive room that simulate the original fresco. The virtual world developed by the installation, implements animated processes that play with illusion as a device to expand the fresco pictorial narrative beyond its formal physical boundaries, and revealing underlying subtexts (Oware, 2017), left by Andrea Mantegna as particular signatures of his mastery.

The presentation will include the animations making process, and the immersive environment experience using the AR/VR/MR system: Oculus Quest 2 headset, HTC VIVE Plus headset, and Microsoft HoloLens headset. The audience will be able to use, try or experience the immersive environment containing the 2D and 3D expanded animations.

Photo of Andres Montenegro presenting at the Animation Dimensions conference in Luzern, Switzerland

Interactive Spatialized animations in “The Wedding Chamber Project” as a methodology to produce phenomenological diegetic renderings inside an XR immersive environment. Presented at the ANIVAE Workshop, for the 30TH IEEEVR Conference in Shanghai, China. March 25, 2023.

Animation inside an XR immersive world nowadays implies a strong assertion of what a relatively old media transfigures within a new one. The Extended Reality computing environment becomes the emerging framework and catalyst where animated narratives can construct a spatialized layer of meaningful diegetic experiences revamping on a strong basis what interactivity means for users. In this short paper, these insights are exposed, analyzed, and discussed from the computing, artistic, and interdisciplinary perspectives, referring to “The Wedding Chamber”, an XR project in progress that articulates an experimental way of playing animation to produce knowledge through an interactive methodology.

The Most Beautiful Room in The World (AKA The Wedding Chamber)

Cinematic Video version of the XR installation presented and screened at the 30th IEEEVR 2023 Conference in Shanghai, China, March 25-29, 2023.

This creative video explains visually the development process of an interactive VR/AR immersive installation that reenacts a paramount masterpiece from the early Renaissance. “The Wedding Chamber Installation” is based on the aesthetic, artistic and pre-cinematic expressivity conveyed by the illusionistic devices created and painted by Andrea Mantegna in the late 15th century in his fresco “The Wedding Chamber”, dubbed as “The Most Beautiful Room in the World”, situated in the Saint Giorgio Castle, Mantua, Italy.

Screenshot of the Most Beautiful Room in the World, showing characters from the fresco

Simulated characters from the Andres Mantegna fresco in CGI.

Screenshot of the Most Beautiful Room in the World showing the interactivity in action

Interactive 3D animated putti from the original fresco based on Lucian of Samosata “The Dome”.

Screenshot of the Most Beautiful Room in the World, showing puttis flying

Interactive 3D illusionistic elements from the original fresco.

©2023 Andres Montenegro