"Las Meninas," painted by Diego Velazquez in 1656, challenges the viewer with its enigmatic subject matter. The painter himself appears on the painting as the court painter on the right. In the center is Princess Margarita who poses for him with her maids. The faces of Margarita's parents are reflected in the mirror on the back wall.
The mystery behind this painting is what Velazquez
is actually painting. Is the reflection the canvas which Velazquerz is
working on? However, it is also possible that the king and queen have just
walked into the room seeing what we see... The painting raises multiple
questions about the nature of representation, seeing, power, and metaphysics.
About the Project
The applicaiton was created, directed and produced in 1997 at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) by Hisham Bizri, Andrew Johnson and Christina Vasilakis with the talents of Kyong Park, Javier Girado and Michael Gold.
Purpose of the Las Meninus Project
In this application, the 2D picture is reconstructed with CAVE into 3D presentation, which looks at these questions from different perspectives. Through interaction and navigation in the virtual world of Las Meninus, viewers are able to challenge the notion of the painting - instead of always remaining static in their relationship to it, they can dynamically interaction with the elements, change the perspective that VR can provide, and explore the hidden space through virtual reality.
The virtual journey even goes behind the figures
in the work, explores its historical context and enters a hidden passageway
that exits from the painting to show video clips about 20th Century
fascism. Here the computer technology is applied
to look at the past and establish connections between present and past.
Hardware and Software Surport
The appliction runs on CAVE-based virtual reality hardware such as the CAVE (tm) and Imersadesk (tm) developed at EVL at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It can also run on portable, single-screen stations designed by EVL.
The application was compiled under IRIX 6.2 and requires at least an RE2 and preferably an IR to run well. Audio surport (such as VSS) is also needed to fully experience the piece.
The graphics are implemented using OpenGL and Performer from Silicon Graphics. In addition, the interface to the CAVE is possible via Dave Pape's Performer CAVE library. Video avatar graphics are realized with Joe Insley's video avatar library. The models were created with the SoftImage modelling package.
Similar Applications
Back to top of
this page.
Back
to contents of the presentation.
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at yingfeng@cs.indiana.edu