Interactive: Starry Night Set In Motion

February 11, 2012 by Dave Haynes

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Oh wow. As seen on tech blog The Verge, Greek visual artist Petros Vrellis has taken one of the most famous paintings ever done and made it into an interactive, multi-touch project.

Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” uses “80,000 ‘particles’ which flow around the 1920 x 1080 resolution environment at 30 frames per second.”

The art world being what it is, there will be all kinds of debate about the beauty or offensiveness of this. The painting is among my favorites (me and millions of people), and I think it’s a nice, respectful look at the work. Van Gogh struggled mightily with mental illness and you kind of wonder when you see this rolling sky if that’s not how he was seeing things.

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