Exhibition »The Art of Immersion«

09.09.2017 - 28.01.2018

A fundamental aspect of new media in its different manifestations is its immersive character. This has already been seen in the history of the panoramic painting, of Cinerama and of installation art and has  achieved a new level of transforming experiences of reality with the immersive, digital visualisation systems of virtual reality and of augmented reality since. This development has been promoted by many renowned media artists. The exhibition »The Art of Immersion« offers an overview of some of the most important examples of the “art of immersive experiences”. 

It comprises an inhomogeneous selection of significant works, which have been developed by Jean Michel Bruyère, Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Kurt Hentschläger, Sarah Kenderdine, Ulf Langheinrich, Matthew McGinity and Jeffrey Shaw, for the panoramic projects and represent milestones in the conceptual and aesthetic development of contemporary immersive art. In their work, the artists investigate themes, which are situated between abstraction and narration as well as archive and society and focus on an intensive involvement of the public and on strong proprioception in their realisation. Countless innovations in the field of immersive empirical worlds have been promoted significantly at the ZKM | Karlsruhe by Jeffrey Shaw, employees of the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media and guest artists who were active here. An overview of the periods of the individual pieces of work can be found on the ZKM website.