Goya’s Masterpieces Displayed as Never Seen Before

Clac Video Relies on Ventuz and Digital Media Technologies (DMT) to Bring the Immersive Exhibition #INGOYA to Life.

©INGOYAEXPO

The #INGOYA exhibition showcases the paintings of Spanish master Francisco de Goya, in an immersive audiovisual experience that presents many of his most famous works with unprecedented detail and fidelity. The exhibition first opened in Granada, Spain, in March 2021, and is currently in Madrid, Spain through mid-January 2022, with additional Spanish and European stops already scheduled for 2022/2023.

The project started in 2019 at the initiative of Yolanda Bergareche, a renowned audiovisual producer in collaboration with Juan Delcan as creative director and The Pool Exhibitions, a major AV production company with projects in the Iberian and Latin American regions.

Following previous joint projects, Bergareche approached Carlos Sánchez and his company Clac Video to design the technical solution and lead the technical department of the #INGOYA exhibition project. Carlos Sánchez is an AV director and producer, with more than 30 years of experience in video production for music and corporate video content, live events and fixed installations.

The #INGOYA exhibition is based on a large scale and resolution video projections, that completely cover the walls of the exhibition halls in each of its venues, to create an immersive experience where the audience can move surrounded by the Goya paintings. Originally, Clac Video designed a technical solution based on traditional media servers that delivered the signal to a large number of Epson Laser projectors – up to 35, depending on the dimensions and topology of the venue.

After the initial solution was planned, the global Covid pandemic delayed the entire project, which should have opened in April, 2020. Carlos Sánchez then learned about the Ventuz software due to other fixed installation projects and was impressed by the technical and creative possibilities of the Ventuz platform.

By September 2020, when the exhibition project was finally relaunched, he had made the decision that Ventuz was the best possible platform for the project and for future revisions of the #INGOYA exhibition which would require greater control and new interactivity options.

“When we saw the possibilities that Ventuz offered us for this and future projects it was an obvious decision. The flexibility to adapt to our existing workflow without major changes was also key in our decision to use this solution for the exhibition”

Carlos Sánchez, Clac Video

The #INGOYA exhibition consists of high-resolution scans of the Goya paintings, which were later animated and edited to create large resolution video content. All the content was then encoded using the Notch LC codec to ensure the maximum quality, while being optimized for real-time playback due to the GPU accelerated decoding.

“For a project like this, the color fidelity was crucial, some of the most famous Goya paintings, such as the “Pinturas Negras” (“Black Paintings”) series feature extremely dark colors with various shades and nuances that must be faithfully displayed in the exhibition. We are extremely happy with the color reproduction in Ventuz, even some experts from El Prado Museum, that holds the biggest Goya collection in the world, were really impressed during their visit by how close the colors were to the originals”, Sánchez continues.

In addition, Clac Video chose hi-end workstations based on Nvidia Quadro GPUs from local integrator Azken Muga to run the Ventuz software and provide all the processing power required for such a demanding setup – the systems´ would run in real time for several hours a day, six days a week, and the systems proven reliability was a deciding factor in their choice.

Sánchez approached Digital Media Technologies (DMT) and Jorge Enueve, a highly experienced Ventuz artist, to help them creating all the necessary Ventuz scenes and logic programming to handle the multi-projection setup of the exhibition, while providing simple controls that could be operated by the non-technical exhibition staff.

“We were really interested when Carlos contacted us to create all the Ventuz scenes for the exhibition. Due to Ventuz flexibility, we could easily integrate within their planned workflow and create not only the projection scenes, but also a simple exhibition control for the personnel onsite. Besides, we are already discussing future improvements to the exhibition concept to make it even more interactive, and Ventuz will be key for this, because it features a complete set of interactivity tools “, said Jorge Enueve, Creative Director at DMT/DMS.

“The first edition of the exhibition in Granada was meant as a test-run for the exhibition, and proved to be very valuable, as the Covid pandemic added new challenges to the whole setup, especially the current shortage of computer components. Ventuz and its staff worked hard to help us solve these problems and ensure that we had a successful exhibition”, adds Carlos Sánchez.

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“When the exhibition arrived in Madrid, this technical solution had already been proven, but the plan was to add little extras with each new installation, such as new graphics and digital signage elements that were integrated into the exhibition content to guide the visitors, and Ventuz real-time capabilities and flexibility really made our life easier. We also tweaked other elements and streamlined the overall workflow for a more demanding setup like this one – with a more complex topology and a much larger audience”, notes Guillermo Plazzola, Senior Ventuz Artist at DMT.

#INGOYA Madrid has been a great success, with more than 50,000 visitors until the end of November 2021, and even larger numbers are expected during the Christmas holidays season. In addition, the exhibition was followed and welcomed with great interest by most of the Spanish media. As mentioned earlier, new exhibition locations have been confirmed for 2022 in Zaragoza and Valencia, while other European cities are already booked as well. Additional cities both in Europe and other continents have expressed their interest in hosting the exhibition in the future too.

“We have big plans for Ventuz in the future, apart from the other installations of the #INGOYA exhibition. We are thrilled by its reliability and quality, and honestly, we are still in the process of grasping all the possibilities that it offers for the projects our customers in the music and corporate events business are asking for. We already have some projects in the making that will rely mainly on Ventuz, stay tuned for more”