The ways in which we form an image of the world have always been profoundly influenced by the media available in a given historical period. This applies equally to artistic and cultural approaches to understanding our world and to scientific modes of inquiry.
For most of recorded history, scientific and aesthetic methods were regarded as inseparably connected.
Even in the modern exact sciences, the collection of data and its representation through media can hardly be considered in isolation from one another. Rather, they must be understood as mutually interdependent components of the process through which knowledge is produced.
Immersive media formats are among the most significant developments in media technology of our time and are therefore of particular contemporary relevance in this context.
By providing a spatial perspective that closely approximates natural perception, they enable scientific data to be represented dynamically throughout the space surrounding the viewer. This gives rise to new approaches to reflection and knowledge concerning our continually evolving view of the world, as well as the ways in which that view is communicated.
Today, these technologies are used primarily in planetariums, which were conceived as immersive media environments from the time of their invention approximately one hundred years ago and operate as such on several levels simultaneously.
The media available in the planetarium theater—which, in addition to the star projector, have long included dome-filling video projections—can, for example, visualize astronomical data on large-scale structures, making them comprehensible in a more intuitive manner than was previously possible.
At the same time, the frameless mode of presentation, which closely approximates natural experience, accommodates a wide range of cultural formats. These enable a direct engagement with the cosmos through artistic and cultural means—for example, in the form of live concerts and performances.
The conjunction of a rationally distanced perspective and an immediate existential experience in our engagement with the cosmos is the unique defining characteristic of the modern planetarium. It provides the foundation for a creative interplay between art and science of a kind found in no other institution.
SpherIcon.one brings together individuals who, at this exciting and dynamic moment in the history of technological and media development, are making essential contributions to how we will interpret and represent our image of the world in the future.
“The True and the Beautiful” serves as the broad theme of this inaugural event, which centers on the encounter between art and science within immersive media environments.