The Art of Immersion

Immersion is an essential aspect of new media in every guise. With precursors in panoramic panting, Cinerama and installation art, today’s immersive digital visualization systems, from panorama projections to virtual reality to augmented reality, have attained a new level of transformational experience of reality, an advance that has been driven by media artists from around the world. Since the 1990s, the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media has played a key role in the research and development of immersive panoramic projection environments: through the conception of EVE – Expanded Virtual Environment (1993) and PLACE – A User’s Manual (1995), the forerunners of AVIE – Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment (2004), a configuration developed at the iCinema Research Center in Sydney that is at the technological heart of the exhibition The Art of Immersion, were developed at the ZKM. AVIE technology is a fully panoramic 3D projection system that makes possible a comprehensive and engaging experience of sensory immersion in digital visual worlds, as the optical representation space coincides with the projection space in which it is experienced. Like in the real world, observers can move through their digital virtual surroundings and participate in its goings-on, which leads to new interactive narrative forms.

The exhibition is part of the focus on the digital revolution in this year’s programming at the ZKM with the current exhibitions Datumsoria: The Return of the Real (September 9, 2017–March 18, 2018) and Open Codes. Living in Digital Worlds (October 20, 2017–August 5, 2018).

The Art of Immersion offers an overview of some of the most important examples of the art of immersive experience. It encompasses a selection of significant works representing milestones in the conceptual and aesthetic progress of contemporary immersive art. These include:

Deluge by Dennis Del Favero with Volker Kuchelmeister, Terry Smith, Stephen Sewell, 2016
iData by Dennis Del Favero, Peter Weibel, 2017
mARChive by Tim Hart, Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw, 2016
Nebula by Dennis Del Favero with Peter Weibel and Elvira Titan, 2017
T_Visionarium IV by Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, 2008-2017
The Infinite Line by Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw, Edwin Nadason Thumboo, 2014
<360> by GRANULAR-SYNTHESIS [Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich], 2002-2017
ALLUVIUM by Ulf Langheinrich, 2010
La Dispersion du Fils by Jean Michel Bruyère/LFKs with Matthew McGinity, Delphine Varas and Thierry Arredondo, 2008-2017

Please consult our website for the screening program.

Curated by Dennis Del Favero, Richard Castelli, Peter Weibel

With special thanks to Jeffrey Shaw

In cooperation with: iCinema – Center for Interactive Cinema Research, epidemic

With support of City University of Hong Kong Center for Applied Computing and Interactive Media (ACIM)