PanoramaFestival

As part of ZKM’s celebration of its »10-year anniversary in the Hallenbau A«, the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media presents with the »PanoramaFestival« a comprehensive overview of its current production: From September 2007 to March 2008, the festival will show new artistic and research projects on a monthly basis. Most of these projects were specially produced for the PanoramaTechnology, a new software and hardware environment for cylindrical 360°-projections, developed by the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media.

Based on the tradition of panoramic projections established by the Institute’s founding director, Jeffrey Shaw, the Institute for Visual Media under the direction of Bernd Linterman now presents a focal point of its current research activities: the development of immersive projection environments, of hardware and software solutions for sophisticated artistic projects, exemplified by the Institute’s most recent development in this field, the »PanoramaScreen«.

The version of the PanoramaScreen presented during the festival measures 8m in diameter and 2.8m in height, and was implemented to display interactive panoramic movies via 6 projectors. The Panorama Display Software developed at the Institute enables the realization of a wide spectrum of applications ranging from filmic projects up to contents generated in real time. The festival will include exemplary projects using 3D animations as well as 360° video material.

The interactive research project »Globorama« by Bernd Linterman, Joachim Böttger and Torsten Belschner investigates new navigable information spaces using innovative representational forms of of satellite images. Taking the theme of the »Oracle« as a starting point, the interactive computer graphics and sound installation by Robert Darroll and Sean Reed explores the construction of [subjective] realities. A further premiere of the festival is the presentation of »THERE IS STILL TIME . . BROTHER«, an interactive installation by the renowned New York performance collective The Wooster Group, which enables the visitors to individually explore a complex filmic scenario. This presentation is followed by Jean Michel Bruyère’s new work »CaMg[CO3]2«, a multifaceted, poetic installation centering on the theme of traveling using video footage shot with the Institute’s 360°-PanoramaCamera. The festival concludes with the ZKM premiere of »Place-Hampi«, a work by Jeffrey Shaw and Sarah Kenderdine with John Gollings and Paul Doornbusch, which was realized by the Australian iCinema Centre in co-operation with the ZKM | Karlsruhe.

With these artistic and research projects presented during the »PanoramaFestival«, the Institute for Visual Media demonstrate the spectrum of the creative and innovative uses of its recently developed PanoramaTechnology while at the same time connecting to the starting points of this research.