French Atelier Des Lumieres: Digital technology creates immersive environments for visitors

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A new art gallery in Paris is showing globally famous artworks - but with a digital technology twist. The Atelier des Lumières, which means Workshop of Light, projects video installations onto the walls of a former iron foundry to create immersive environments, so that visitors can get inside the world of the artist. CGTN's Elena Casas takes us there.

This is Gustav Klimt, as you've never seen him before.

The Viennese artist's opulent works are starring in the first show here at the Atelier des Lumieres in central Paris.

It's the biggest video installation in the world - 140 projectors and 50 loudspeakers combine to immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of turn of the century Vienna.

MICHAEL COUZIGOU, DIRECTOR THE ATELIER DES LUMIERES "Klimt was above all a decorative artist, he painted enormous frescoes in palaces in Vienna, and he's an artist who worked with all sorts of materials, like gold leaf, so these works, these materials, lend themselves really well to digital projection."

The exhibition space is a former iron foundry that was abandoned in the mid 20th century.

ELENA CASAS, PARIS "The Atelier des Lumières also shows contemporary artwork - this installation is by the OUCH collective, who are based in London and Los Angeles. It's been designed by a computer programme, to show that artificial intelligence can also create art."

Paris is of course already an art-lover's paradise - but this new, immersive experience is drawing in the crowds. Visitors say it's like nothing they've seen before.

"We were in a fairytale universe, it's very varied, you see lots of different pictures, and the colours are amazing."

"It's very calming, it's for all ages, we saw children fascinated by the images who went to touch them and couldn't believe they were actually on a wall, and adults loved it too."

"It's fabulous, it's much more of a sensory experience than just looking at pictures, and the music helps immerse you."

The Klimt exhibition runs until October - and the curators are planning to immerse gallery-goers in the worlds of Chagall, Gauguin and Van Gogh in future shows. Elena Casas, CGTN, Paris.