Gala Contemplating You
The Dali´ Museum
Issue 32 | September 2014
Agency
Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Creative Team
Partner Jeff Goodby Executive Creative Directors Joakim Borgstrom Anders Gustafsson Art Director Pablo Rochat Shane Fleming Copywriters Nancy Strange Sarah Anderson
Production Team
Senior Creative Developers Mike Newell Chris Allick Creative Developer Marpi Marcinowski Associate Web Developer Kia Lam Associate User Experience Manager Patrick Wong Executive Interactive Producer Margaret Brett-Kearns Interactive Producer Austin Kim Cordelia Holt
Other Credits
Account Director Hermon Ghermay Senior Brand Strategist Katie Nagl Research & Analytics Strategist Arthi Veeraragavan
Date
June 2014
Background
In the summer of 2014, the Dali´ Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, hosted a special exhibition entitled 'The Marvels of Illusion'.
At the centre of the show was an installation, which recreated one of Salvador Dali´'s most famous paintings, 'Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)'. Visitors to the gallery were able to become part of the optical and intellectual illusion Dali´ created and put themselves in the picture.
Idea
In the original 1976 work, Dali´ had proved that 121 pixels was the minimum pixellation at which the brain was able to identify a particular face.
A photo kiosk in the gallery turned visitors' self-portraits into pixellated reproductions of the original artwork and projected these alongside the original.
A mobile website (galacontemplatingyou. com) allowed virtual visitors from anywhere around the world to submit their photos and become part of the artwork as well.
Results
The exhibition still had two months to run at the time of going to press so no results were available.
Our Thoughts
As Dr. Hank Hine, Director of the Dali´ Museum, said: ‘Marvels of Illusion’ highlights the unusual blending of science and art that Dali´ often explored’.
Not only is the idea true to Dali´, who would have loved it, it also engages the mind with a question the surrealists posed more than once themselves, who exactly is observing whom?
I was intrigued by what Jeff Goodby, founder of Goodby Silverstein, had to say about this. ‘Surrealism has always been about finding a reality hidden behind what we see, something that makes us see the world in a new way and this is a terrific example of doing exactly that.’
Certainly, trying to find the real meaning of a brand and get its customers to see it in a new way is what fuels creative people in agencies. Art and advertising rubbing shoulders again.