This short article is a nice review of the various ways in which people have tried to create immersive visual environments, using the technologies of the day, from 18th century panoramic painting, to hot air balloons and observation towers, to panoramic cameras. For me this post is a helpful engagement with notions of image, materiality, embodiment, time and space… and a reminder that as humans we never seem to complete our quest for augmenting our experiences and bodies. Computational tools are about to launch us into a new world of immersive engagements (eg. the availability of Oculus Rift), but this is in itself not new.
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These are fascinating. Mechanical ingenuity is quite amazing: Babbage’s engine, Vaucanson’s automata, semaphores for long distance communication, watches pushing mechanical miniaturization… Writing code seems almost to easy by comparison. But the scale of these “Panorama” is something else. And the plethora of competing brand names is quite funny.
If it wasn’t for the caption, I would have thought that the photo of the 635 kg “Mammoth” is a spoof from a Buster Keaton movie.
I am curious about Vanessa Schwartz’s discussion of “technological illusionism”. In sound studies, Edison’s “tone tests” from the 1910s are often discussed. Audiences would listen in the dark to what was either a full orchestra and live singer, or one of Edison’s best phonograph model. According to accounts from the time, audiences were often unable to distinguish between the two, which is hard to reconcile with the actual low fidelity of these early technologies.