Imperial MBA students launch new art experience concept

A team of five MBA students from Imperial College Business School has developed a new pop-up concept for viewing classical art in an immersive setting

Many people find traditional art galleries stuffy affairs, and the masterpieces they contain mystifying and inaccessible. That’s according to a team of MBA students from the Business School which is developing a more immersive viewing experience.

SensArt takes high resolution digitized copies of artworks and projects them onto iconic buildings as part of intimate pop-up events that include an educational aspect detailing the artist and work.

“We wanted to break away from the passive museum-going experience,” said Nino Oniani, who is a member of the team that also includes Jason O’Malley, Abu Mohammed, Olia Sardarova and Salman Haq.

“Using music, voiceover and storytelling as well as creating the right ambience, we aim to give our audience a 360-degree sensory experience. In this way, we believe we can widen the appeal of these masterpieces.”

For the launch event, SensArt collaborated with two students at the Royal College of Art, JooHyun Ryu and Hangil Song, for a pop-up event on the work of Edgar Degas inside Imperial’s iconic Queen’s Tower.

In attendance was Business School Dean Professor G. “Anand” Anandalingam, who commented: “I was truly very impressed by the show; the texture of the brick walls on the Queen’s Tower truly gave a three-dimensional effect to the Degas paintings, and brought them to life better than I have ever seen before.”

Following their inaugural pop-up, SensArt has plans to exhibit in rural Europe and the Middle East, with the hope of bringing art to those who can’t – or won’t – go to more conventional spaces. They are also hoping to digitally exhibit private art collections not currently accessible to the general public and explore new technologies such as 3D Holographic projection.