Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Henry Shaw Would Boggle, Or, Not The Rouen Cathedral


Locals sometimes refer to the Missouri Botanical Garden as Shaw's Garden, after its founder, Henry Shaw. He also donated the land that became Tower Grove Park. The building in these pictures is his home in the middle of what is now the garden.

Shaw could never have conceived of what we saw at his home Saturday night. The Flora Borealis show included spectacular video and laser projections on his house, ever changing and quite unreal. I have no idea how it was done. It made me think of a 21st Century version of Claude Monet's series of paintings of the Rouen (a word that is very hard for English speakers to pronounce correctly) Cathedral. The same building over and over, with each image at a different time of day or weather. Monet used his eyes and a brush. Today we use algorithms.  

The St. Louis Fringe Festival starts tonight. Be there or be square.    





5 comments:

William Kendall said...

Beautiful!

The same concept is used here on Parliament Hill during the summer, a half hour lightshow when dusk arrives.

Sharon said...

Fantastic images. I wish I could see this in person.

RedPat said...

That is beautiful!

Lady Fi said...

Gorgeous shots.

Jack said...

I love light shows like this. AND, your Rouen observation is apt, more apt than you understood. I went to Rouen three years ago, and on summer nights they have an unbelievable laser light show. The night I was there I saw one show about the Norse journeys to that part of France and a second show about Joan of Arc, who was from Rouen. Amazing. Check this out: https://hartforddailyphoto.blogspot.com/2015/09/out-of-jurisdiction-cathedral-of-light.html