Mumbai’s architectural heritage is unrivalled in India. The city has one of the largest representations of the grand neo-Gothic style of architecture, numerous examples of Indo-Saracenic architecture, and one of the world’s largest number of Art Deco buildings.  The exceptional architectonic heterogeneity of Mumbai is the subject of Look Up Mumbai, a new work for DomeLab which premiered in India in January 2016 digitally transforming 70 gigapixel fisheye images taken all over the city in 2015. The dome of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya has been adopted as the epicenter of an artistic exploration that specifically focuses the ceiling architectures of Mumbai’s heritage and contemporary buildings, and transforms them into an urban celestial imaginary.
 
Correct geometric ‘projection mapping’ of these ceilings within the dome maintain the architectonic integrity of their varying sizes and proportions, providing dramatic perceptual shifts in scale and form as the sequence of images unfold. To amplify this, digital image processing techniques are used to create transitions between these images and the locations they present. These deconstruct the internal pixel structure of each image, then modulate and blend them in various patterns and transformations. This cinematic trompe l’oeil of structural conjunctions and iconographic interpolations creates an aesthetic revisioning of these various sites, and they became remediated as a narrative sequence that focuses their spatial, formal and pictorially associative qualities. An underlying symbolic dimension also reveals itself, as the architecture and decoration of these ceilings often imply correspondences of cosmological significance.

“I believe museums have to now invest in and experiment with emerging technologies to increase the footfalls and make the experience more interactive. I look forward to supporting ‘smart’ museum initiatives.”
- Sangita Jindal
Chairperson, JSW Foundation
 
Look Up Mumbai is created by media artists Sarah Kenderdine, Bernd Lintermann and Jeffrey Shaw, in collaboration with the Hong Kong photographerJohn Choy. The projected was initiated by JSW Foundation for ChhatrapatiShivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. Support for this installation by Museum Victoria and State Government of Victoria, Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, Sydney and the Australian Consulate General, Mumbai. Music of Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma courtesy Mahesh Babu of Ninaad Music & Marketing Pvt. Ltd. Architectural historian and project coordinator: Preeti Goel Sanghi, JSW Foundation. Fieldwork assistant: Akshay Kore. Installation management: Damian Leonard, Immersive Realisation.

For more information, see also:

The Times of India (Mumbai Edition) 21 February 2016

The Guardian 2 February 2016

The Hindu 1 February 2016

mid-day 28 January 2016

Gulf News 4 February 2016

The Indian Express 4 February 2016

The Asian Age 1 March 2015