Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Panorama in 360 Degrees

The first 360-degree panorama was developed around 1790 by the English artist Robert Baker (1739-1806). Robert Baker is the inventor of the classic panorama. He conceived of the painting without boundaries, the painting that could not be seen in its entirety in one look. In a sense, it has much in common with dome paintings in churches. The famous Spanish painter goya made his unequalled dome painting Miracle of St. Anthony of Padua in the San Antonio de la Florida chapel in Madrid. Here too the viewer cannot see all of the painted image in one glance. Our eyes explore the space, navigate through space in order to view all the aspects of the painting and to find out how the painted figures relate to each other.

Robert Baker developed “rules” which a painted panorama, and its presentation, should obey. A painted panorama completes a full circle and neither the top nor the bottom of the canvas is visible to the viewer. The panorama is placed in a circular building and the visitor enters, from a dark space, via a spiral staircase that ends in the centre of the panorama. The panorama itself is displayed in daylight. A glass dome at the roof of the building—which is shielded from view by a “velum” so the viewer has no contact with the outside world—sheds indirect light on the painting. In front of the canvas, a so-called “faux terrain” is laid out, with objects and figures. This terrain strongly enhances the optical illusion as well as the perspective. It also hides the bottom of the painting from view. The spectator finds him/ herself in the centre of the panorama, surrounded by the painting and closed off from the exterior world.

Painted panoramas characteristically portrayed reality as accurately as possible. Photography and film had, after all, not yet been invented. Displays consisted of city views, such as the view of Edinburgh, the panorama of Constantinople, or the famous canvas depicting Cairo and the borders of the Nile. Occasionally, panoramas were painted that depicted religious themes, but war and battle scenes were much more popular subjects. The Siege of Paris by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, the Battle at Sedan, the Bourbaki panorama in Luzern, the Battle at Waterloo. Artists would visit the area immediately after the battle had ended and from personal observation and interviews with those involved they painted a picture of the slaughter as accurately as possible. Panoramas were traveling attractions and they drew large crowds. Hundreds were painted in the 19th century, but with the advent of cinematography, interest for the painted panoramas declined. After all, the camera recorded reality much quicker and even more straightforward. The majority of panoramas has been lost. Today, only some twenty survive in their original form. One of these is the Panorama Mesdag in The Hague (The Netherlands).

During the 20th century very few new panoramas were painted. In 1986 a new one opened in Al-Mada, Iraq. It depicts the historical battle of Al-quaddisyah, that took place in 637: Arabs on horseback against the Persian army on elephants. Most likely, this panorama symbolises the more recent war between Iraq and Iran. Recently, new painted panoramas were opened in Jinzhou and Dandong, China. Almost concurrent with the development of the OMNI- MAX/IMAX Dome theatres, experiments with moving images in a panorama format start with the advent of the video camera. Artists start experimenting with spatial constellations of monitors and projectors. The American artist Ira Schneider is one of the first to place monitors in a circle. His installation Time Zones shows the twenty-four time zones of the world by using twenty-four monitors placed in a circle in a dark space. And just like the artists who painted panoramas, Schneider worked with a group of assistants, some of them well-known artists in their own right. Bill Viola and Juan Downey, for instance, made some of the video recordings that can be seen in Schneider’s panorama. A new generation of artists is quick to abandon the representation of reality and starts to manipulate image, time, and space. Marie-Jo Lafontaine, George Snow, Gary Hill, and Jeffrey Shaw, Kurt d’Haeseleer, they all develop new forms of panoramas, their common characteristic being that the viewer is surrounded by image, and often sound, in a 360-degree environment. The viewer searches space, explores space, and discovers varying images that are coherent, but cannot be seen all at once. The panorama becomes a dream. Fragments of images, sound, memories, destruction, manipulation, music, connections, vistas. Interpretation.

These starting points led me to develop a 360-degree video projection panorama. Together with architect Tom Postma and Jozef Hey of BeamSystems I have designed a video panorama with a circular image of twenty-five meters, allowing a synchronously moving image of 360 degrees by using ten projectors. Artists are invited to work within this 360-degree environment and design a moving panorama, with sound. This video panorama has now been set up in a laboratory situation, but it is designed for travel.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica SESC_Videobrasil": de 30 de setembro a 25 de outubro de 2007, p.16-17, Edições SESC SP, São Paulo-SP, 2007, p. 234 - 235.

The idea of this seminar, a partnership between Associação Cultural Videobrasil, the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP), is to raise for debate a number of themes that when seen in conjunction point toward the various paths electronic art has taken throughout the world and in Brazil in terms of mixing artistic processes, rearranging traditions, and causing ruptures in the sphere of language.

As such, the guest creators and researchers are invited to tackle such themes as the directions image-art is taking in the 21 st century in its intersections with the various media, configuring (De)limit(ation)s and hybridisations; or moreover, the tensions generated between work, artist, and public, indicating a new fruition defined by the play of contemplations and interventions. Then there are the procedures and interfaces of mediation that reconfigure art in present times, especially through the incorporation of mobile media devices and digital networks, as well as options for multiple narratives that engender specific meanings in this art of today.

For reasons of organization, we have avoided structuring the seminar around present tendencies, as these would be too imprecise, but rather around concepts. These concepts look to render account of some of the challenges posed by the technological poetics around which today’s artists and researchers have congregated. They by no means put an end to the subject, but they stimulate debate on the relationship between cinema, video, and art, the theme chosen for this 16h Videobrasil Festival. These concepts are: hybridisations, media, and experimentations, actions and contemplations, and multiple narratives. Each panel was composed with one of these in mind and we hope the debates can foster an understanding of the effects of these contemporary imbrications.

The Knowledge Zones also proposes an approach geared toward television, with all of the debates can going out live over the Internet. In previous editions, the Festival has dialogue with various media modalities, having transmittes its events via such diverse platforms as open television networks, Videowall, and Street TV, videophone hook-ups, “mini-TV” newscasts or “videojornow”. Today, against the backdrop of the current discussion on new directions in electronic art, at a time when digital TV is about to be implemented in Brazil and in the face of proliferating use of IPTV technology and content generated by Web 2.0 users, the 16^th Videobrasil has decided to push the boat out and experiment with Web TV/Streaming (www.emm.usp.br/eca-ctr).

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica SESC_Videobrasil": de 30 de setembro a 25 de outubro de 2007, p.16-17, Edições SESC SP, São Paulo-SP, 2007, p. 230 - 231.