I've been rather stuck about what to do with Van Gogh. It seems that
if one is going to be somewhat "true" to a work, and bother to call it
"VR Van Gogh," then that places some limitations on what kinds of
things you could do with it. His work is pretty much portraits,
landscapes, and figure studies of people he knew and places he lived.
One seems almost required to do a biography, or a work of historical
fiction. I'm sure this would be a terribly fascinating project, but
it's not really the genre I had in mind.
Of some interest in regards to this is one of the scenes in Akira
Kurosawa's _Dreams_, in which the dreamer is in an art gallery, and
then enters a Van Gogh painting.
Ray
I really like this suggestion, of incorporating many works of art into
a museum. It preserves the integrity of a work of art, yet allows
great flexibility of story as one work of art interacts with another.
You could have Goya, Picasso, and Dali having a conversation about the
political implications of art in wartime Spain. Now there's a hell of
a plotline! Or Realists battling Surrealists, or Cubists vs.
Futurists. The potentials for cross-fertilization are amazing.
Of course, I'm just naming visual artists because it's easy for me to
do. One could easily throw in one's favorite composer, dramatist,
political figure, scientist, etc. It's all interconnected, culturally
speaking. There are probably many ways of adjoining disparate cultral
contexts, allowing them to interact, and gaining a novel end-product.
It also has the "no previous script, no correct performance" property,
which very much appeals to me, at least in theory. Who knows how
stimulating it would be in practice.
Cheers,
Brandon