"PLACE - A USER'S MANUAL", founded the development of panoramic installations at the ZKM

Place - Ruhr is the second of the four-part series of panoramic installations that Jeffrey Shaw founded in 1995 with "PLACE - A USER'S MANUAL". In the center of a panoramic screen is a motorized revolving platform. A camera in the middle of the platform serves as a user interface that allows visitors to navigate through a virtual world populated with panoramic images. Moving virtually into the center of one of these cylinders, one sees the photographic image of a place from the perspective of the panoramic camera at the time of the shot. A digital image rotating with the visitors - the window to the virtual world - is projected onto the screen by projectors attached to the platform.

Over the years the presentation has been adapted to the technical possibilities of the time. Thus the panoramic images in the virtual world were initially photographs, later moving images and, in the most recent version "Place: Hampi" (2007), stereoscopic animated films incorporated into panoramic photographs.

Software: Adolf Matthias
Hardware: Huib Nelissen
Production: ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe