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The Work Of Two Old Masters Transformed Into Digital Landscapes

Visual artist Quayola takes two paintings from Velázquez and Tiepolo and turns them into digital soup.

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This is the latest piece from visual artist Quayola called Topologies (shown at the BFI Southbank, London in conjunction with the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival), part of his ongoing Strata Series, which looks at transformation. This piece takes the paintings Las Meninas by Velázquez and Immacolata Concezione by Tiepolo and turns them into pulsating digital landscapes.

The artist explains:

Differently from the previous Strata pieces, Topologies does not describe a process of transformation, rather it focuses into the observation of objects that are already fully transformed. The subjects of these new pieces are two iconic paintings from the Prado Museum's collection: Las Meninas of Velazquez and L' Immacolata Concezione of Tiepolo. Following the rules behind their visual composition and colours, the two masterpieces have been transformed into digital fabrications through the use of custom software. Topologies consist in the exploration of the digital objects created by this transformation process. The outcome is not a narrative film but rather separate objects of contemplation… Literally "digital paintings".

The installation itself was in a large room with two large video screens on the facing wall showing the digital artworks, on the side walls were images of the paintings with a vector diagram of their compositions. Two benches were installed, and once you spent a few minutes on your feet staring at the mutating forms, you could see why. It’s a hypnotic, mesmerizing, and draining experience, the footage combined with the droning music creates an immersive effect that envelops you in this shimmering digital world as the linear shapes fold and form. Take a look at the videos and see for yourselves. Velázquez is above and Tiepolo below.