Immersive wall art with AI launched in Coimbatore

Immersive wall art with AI launched in Coimbatore

While on a holiday in France, Sudarshan Sundararaman, found himself standing in front of a massive 12 to 13 ft painting in the Louvre Museum, awed by the large scale of the work. “It struck me then that if something can be created in such a scale, why can’t art be scaled and reimagined for walls back home?” he asks, adding, “I wanted to reinvent how people think about walls, not as blank surfaces to be painted every decade, but as personalised canvases that reflect the homeowner’s identity, mood, inspirations, and emotions. Even if you look at a wall 1000 times, it should excite you.”

As founder and chief growth architect of Scot&Bel Studio, he set up a space that offers an immersive experience. At the entrance, a Thai mural is spread out on a wall. “The textures and expressions imitate art, but it is a wall paper. This way, art can be accessible to everyone, not just those who can hire artists,” he says as I put on the VR headset and take a virtual tour moving through various rooms exploring walls themed around heritage, Nature, wildlife, art and more. “ One of our early internal experiments involved transforming the walls inside our factory with a wall paper on greenery with birds and butterflies. It brought in a lot of positivity among our workers.”

He calls his studio, an ‘experiential’ space where customers don’t flip through catalogues but instead visualise designs on large displays, and learn about material, textures, and art. While his father’s company specialises in technical textiles and supplies bulletproof jackets, NBC suits, extreme cold weather gear, tenting and sleeping bags to the Indian Army, the exposure helped him understand textures of textiles, durability, and innovation. “Along with my technical team, we began experimenting with non-woven fabrics, coatings, GSM, and printing techniques. We arrived at a wall-covering medium that behaves like fabric, looks like art, and avoids all the weaknesses of conventional wallpaper. There is no PVC, no bubbles, no peeling, and no repetition of patterns,” explains Sudarshan.

Wall art themed of wildlife is popular | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Besides building a library of over 1000 in-house licensed images themed around Nature, kids’ spaces, spirituality, abstract, murals, and poetry, there are tailored AI-assisted suggestions too. “A VR preview of the selected design takes them virtually inside their homes. They can also co-create with our in-house architect or designer or make their own sketches which we can help develop as full wall art. We want them to discover us online, but experience and buy offline,” says Sudarshan and talks of ‘PURE’ certification given for the material, on accounts of porosity, UV resistance, resistance to bacteria/fungi and environment friendly standards. “The material fully disintegrates once disposed. We have already done some large-format walls up to 15 to 8 ft tall at homes, retail spaces, and corporate offices in the city. We will soon start ceiling art for a leading retail bakery and sweets chain.”

He says large murals, forest, historical themes and sculptures are popular besides inspirational walls based on customer’s life goals. “ We also enhance the output with artists. For example, one customer wanted the birds in a particular colour.. It can be fully customised and can be easily replaced with a new one. Every art work comes with a five year warranty,” he says, adding, “ A house should have walls that uplift mood, boost energy, help manifest goals, or simply give joy.