While Salvador Dali was known for his surrealist paintings, famed mustache and his unique accent, he was also on the forefront of technology and pushing the limits on innovation.
And the latest exhibit at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg is honoring just that.
The Dali Museum is bringing Dali as close back to life as it can, with an interactive, virtual, life-size version of the Spanish surrealist painter. Three screens that showcase the virtual Dali have been unveiled to honor Dali’s 115th birthday, who famously was quoted as saying he would never fully die.
Museum curators and Goodby Agency engineers in San Francisco made sure to uphold that.
“You have to understand the artist before the art,” Kathy Grife, COO of the Dali Museum, said. “You get to know him in a way that you haven’t been able to understand before.”
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPtcU9VmIIE[/embed]
Engineers wanted to go beyond simply placing a video of the artist speaking to museum attendees — in fact, three different men had to be combined to capture the larger-than-life Dali. An actor of the same height and build was used to capture Dali walking, painting, adjusting a bow tie and speaking. A voice actor was scoured for across the world, with officials ultimately finding someone in Barcelona.
“It was very difficult, because he himself has said he knows four languages but is fluent in none of them,” Beth Bell, the Dali’s marketing director, said.
And Dali’s face was overlaid on the actor’s, to give a truly lifelike look to the virtual image. The virtual Dali only says phrases he had been known to say during his life, culminating in 125 interactive videos, for 45 minutes with a staggering 190,512 different combinations to be used.
“He knows the days of the week, the weather,” Bell said. “We wanted to use real quotes of things he really said, but also weaving in real things from modern day so [viewers] know this isn’t footage, it’s artificial intelligence. Dali was an early adopter of new technology so we believe he would be delighted, 30 years after his death, that AI allows to bring him back to life.”
The Dali Museum has been working on innovation the past few years, most recently with the Dreams of Dali exhibit which immerses guests in the surrealist paintings. Officials said their goal is to introduce one new interactive component for the museum each year, as it not only plays into the spirit of Dali but also has garnered attention from new museumgoers.
“We like visitors to be a part of the art and that’s what these installations allow them to do,” Grife said. “These experiences really influence them — both by giving motivation to visit and experience while it they’re here. We’re all embracing the digital world to engage across a broad spectrum. These are created in the spirit of Dali, who experimented in almost every medium.”
