One focus of the research and development work of the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media is the area of immersive projection environments for artistic projects. From 1993 to 2002, the long-term research project "EVE - Extended Virtual Environment" was realized in this context under the direction of Jeffrey Shaw, an environment for dome projections that technically and conceptually explores new forms of interactive, immersive visualization and VR applications.
The "Extended Virtual Environment" represents a novel paradigm of a moving image window: It can be interactively controlled by the viewer and enables him to explore a spherical space of computer-generated, three-dimensional moving images and video images within the dome-shaped architecture, which is approximately 9 meters high and 12 meters in diameter.
While the traditional media of cinema and television reproduce time and space as a contemplative experience for a passive audience, "EVE" reproduces time and space for an active audience to simulate an immediate experience. The static picture frame is replaced by the wandering gaze, which assembles its own visual narrative in a field of vision open to all sides.
The following projects, among others, have been realized for EVE at ZKM:
- Jeffrey Shaw: "The Telepresent Onlookers" [1995]
- SICS [Swedish Institute of Computer Science]: "The Web Planetarium" [1998]
- Jean Michel Bruyère: "Si Poteris Narrare, Licet" [2002]
- Dennis Del Favero, Neil Brown, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel: "T_Visionarium I" [2004]