Immersive art: Step beyond the frame

With over 300,000 tickets sold so far, Beyond Monet continues to captivate audiences throughout North America. This digital art experience pairs traditional paintings, an evocative soundtrack and cutting-edge projection technology to take visitors into the heart of the impressionist’s incredible world of light and color.

By Normal Studio for Paquin Entertainment, Beyond Monet debuted in Toronto in 2021 and has already enthralled visitors in Honolulu and Miami with runs in Milwaukee, St Louis and Calgary scheduled. The experience uses forty-six 12K laser projectors with content programmed in Dataton WATCHOUT and played back by fifteen powerful WATCHPAX 60 media servers, for a pixel-rich, perfectly seamless canvas.  Production workstations with WATCHOUT were provided by Dataton’s North American partner, Show Sage.

The 25,000 sq ft exhibition space is divided into three zones. The Garden gallery sets the context before the visitor transits through the Prism to finally emerge in the Infinity Room, a stunning 360° audiovisual experience filled with incandescent light and glistening colors. With no edges and no limits, this oval space is designed to make the visitor feel like a character inside Monet’s world. The 40-minute loop of carefully curated content immerses visitors in the life and works of the impressionist master, recreating the dreamlike “in the moment” atmosphere of the artworks.

Founded in 2009, Montreal-based Normal Studio has produced more than 300 multimedia experiences for artists and corporate clients to date. The Monet experience follows the huge success of Beyond Van Gogh and is Canada’s largest-ever immersive experience, offering a new perspective on familiar art for many visitors. As Normal describes it: “Like Monet himself, this experience seeks to go beyond the familiar and shed new light on what we thought we knew.”