The audience finds itself inside a giant uterus. Or it flies around cathedral ruins. Or it is transported to a dark, lonely forest.
Such are the experiences offered by Satosphere, a new cinema with a massive dome screen in Montreal designed by the Society for Arts and Technology to provide spectators with a 360o view of art projections.
Eight video projectors splash images over the entire surface of the steel-framed shell, which juts from the roof of the building, while 157 speakers emit sounds, creating the world’s first wholly immersive cinema. It is so advanced that it allows for viewing art in three dimensions without 3D glasses.
Satosphere’s first show last month, Marie-Claude Paulin and Martin Kusch’s Interior, engaged all the senses as guests also sampled fragrant tomatoes and Sichuan pepper drinks.
On screen, figures danced.
Satosphere is “cinema for the 21st century,” Satosphere president Monique Savoie said. “In the beginning of cinema, we hung a sheet in a room and arranged chairs in rows in front of it. And for 100 years that is how we have addressed the contents, like in a box. We said to ourselves that now we have a created a playground for the next century.”
“Today, with the ability to take pictures from multiple viewpoints, we can show someone an environment in 360o or we can put that person inside the image. Or we can create something which allows us to project a person onto screens, more like mirrors, and allow us to have someone almost floating in the space right in the middle of the experience,” she added.
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