What does a 4D image mean? A 3D image is an ordinary one having three dimensions. But when you find yourself in a world, the boundaries of which you don’t feel, when a colorful world of magical images revolves around you, and you don’t understand where the top or the bottom is, and where you are - this is, probably, a 4D image.
But at first, a little about the place called Les Baux. Here, in the south Provence, the ruins of a castle rise on a high hill, and in the bowels of a neighboring hill, carefully cut-out open spaces of a huge rock quarry are hidden (5 thousand square meters, some say, 7 thousand). The ruins of the castle testify to its former strength. Its owners were seduced by the Luther's sermons and became so devoted Huguenots that Cardinal Richelieu called Les Baux Castle ‘a hornet's nest’ and ordered to destroy it. Part of the walls remained from the castle only. Our fantasy, of course, immediately begins to suggest that these strong walls were made of the stones taken from the quarry. Well, in reality, this was not the case. The stone quarry is much younger, it appeared in the 19th century when the business in these areas was on the rise, factories, warehouses and farms were actively built (although some will convince you that the man-made underground kingdom inspired Dante to create the Divine Comedy. Soon, rather many bricks and much concrete appeared and it was faster and more convenient to use them for the construction work, and the stone quarry turned into an empty fairy-tale palace with 9-metre columns supporting the ceilings. These spacious halls were cut out so carefully, as if those who made them foresaw that the future generations would need such halls to make their airy dreams come true. The palace fell asleep in anticipation of a wizard who would make it come to life. And wizards began to appear.
The entrance to the old stone quarry is located in the gorge, at the foot of the hill. The gorge has the sonorous name Val d'Enfer (Hell Valley). Perhaps, this name prompted Jean Cocteau in 1959 to choose this rock quarry as a decoration, and then as an auditorium for his famous film Le testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus). The performance in the exotic place was a great success, but it was the only show that did not continue.
In 1977, Albert Plécy, editor-in-chief of the Le Parisien Libéré newspaper, fascinated by the impressive space of the old rock quarry decided to hold audiovisual performances in it, and founded the Cathédrale d‘Images company. But the technology development level at that time did not allow to fully realize what was in the minds, and the fantastic idea could be put into practice in 2012 only. The first performance was designated as a ‘musical journey into a colourful world’, it used images of the paintings by two friends feuding with each other -Gauguin and Van Gogh. It was a project similar to today's mind-blowing shows created under the guidance of the Italian Gianfranco Iannuzzi. Then came Monet, Renoir and Chagall; Klimt and the views of Vienna; Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Raphael; Picasso and Goya; a Japanese theme when the famous wave by Hokusai is covering you and the geisha girls are dancing ... for some reason, to the Debussy’s music. However, the most impressive performance, perhaps, was the one inspired by the paintings by Bosch, Brueghel and Archimboldo, thanks to a kaleidoscope of images - the gifts grated to us by these painters.
This is not a movie or a stereoscopic movie. A colorful show that fills all the surrounding space, captures you and you dissolve in it. It is like a sudden exit into space where, instead of the stardust in the black sky, the faery images created by great painters came alive, and you want to fly through this universe forever filling your soul with surprise and delight.
Such a miracle is done by a team of five people (mainly Italians). Each performance requires a year of work. Indeed, this is the largest multimedia project that simultaneously uses 140 video projectors controlled by a powerful computer. A sophisticated software uses multiple images combining constantly moving pictures into a unified whole.
At present there is a new enchanting performance, inspired by Dali and Gaudi. The premiere was on March 6, and the show will run until January 3, 2021. Before that the stone quarry was devoted to Van Gogh again (after all, they think of him as one of their own - although he was Dutch, he created his pieces of art in Provence).
