Exhibition

Figuras na paisagem <Figures on the Landscape> is an installation where the observer uses an immersive device that simulates binoculars, named Visorama, through which he or she interacts with virtual photorealistic environments containing micro-narratives, videos and sounds.

The observation of the landscape and it’s characters is done by using three buttons: the zoom button allows a great approximation of the images’ details, whereas the other two buttons allow the observer to activate videos and sounds, aside from performing transitions between the situations or environments presented.

There are two main environments or universes, each one containing a narration that describes the presence of a reader on the vicinity, shifting between the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura – a round library that reminds us of Jorge Luis Borges – and the beach, a typical landscape from Rio. There is also a third environment: the room at Oi Futuro where the exhibition is held, which serves as the starting point to access the other lanscapes.

If the observer chooses to enter the library, he will have three narratives available. In the first, he will see an empty library, as the narration describes the surprise experienced by St. Augustine when he saw his master, St. Ambrose, reading silently. For St. Augustine, the silent reading transforms the library into a mental landscape. The second narrative refers to the “jumping reader”, a character created by Macedônio Fernandes to dissert about non-linear and intertextual reading. The third one is composed by fragments of Livro do Desassosego, a book in which the character/author Bernardo Soares, a book-keeper, speaks of the act of reading as a travel. It’s worth to remind that the narrator and the reader who appear in the library, sometimes alone, sometimes with other readers (and even with contemporary poets, like António Cícero and Fernando Rodrigues), is the artist himself.

In the beach we have three narratives. On the first one we can see, from the lookout at Arpoador rock, the Ipanema beach. The viewpoint of the observer/visitor mixes up with the viewpoint of the artist/reader that sees and hears the bathers’ curious dialogues. The second shows the artist at Ipanema beach reading a book while observing the waves. It’s a situation inspired in a Rubem Braga’s chronicle, Homem ao Mar, in which the artist/reader observes a man swimming and struggles on a desire for him to reach his objective. The effort on the observation and this strong craving leave the distinctive impression that these acts have an influence what he sees.

Every narrative is, in some way, a metaphor of the observer/visitor situation. The installation acts as a mental space, like the library, a space that’s meant to be explored by the observer in a non-linear way, jumping from one point of the image to another, from narrative to narrative, from universe to universe. However, when he does so, he is in some way responsible for what he builds, sees and feels. In this sense, Figuras na Paisagem presents itself literally as a movie theater projection room (and as a kind of drive-in), where the observer is the conductor of the single experience that he makes up not only for himself, but for the other visitors that are in the room.

With Figuras na Paisagem we aimed to create, through interactive micro-narratives, a “poetic” of the landscape that complexifies the relationship between an image and it’s observer, allowing him to freely explore it, in order to find a place for himself before what he sees, hears and feels.

The panoramic installations in general, and distinctively Visorama, bear virtualities that yet have to be explored. Such virtualities converge contemporary art, computer interfaces, and cinema, radically transforming the tradicional standards of the latter: it’s architecture (the dark room), it’s technology (camera and projector) and it’s narrativity (organization of its space-time relations).

Visorama belongs to a lineage of panoramic devices that started in the 18th century and were common all along the 19th. The panoramas’ main characteristic was to immerse the spectator through the removal of the picture’s framing, in such a way that he or she would no longer feel to be upon an image, but upon the reality that image simulated.

Many of these devices had platforms that reproduced some kind of vehicle (train, ship, ballon) in order to take the spectator on a “travel in loco”. Visorama, on the other hand, is closer to traditional cinema regarding this feature, as it presents only a pair of binoculars, allowing “any kind of travelling”. However, unlike cinema, Visorama creates a boundless vision field, as it can look left and right, up and down with no restrictions (due to the fact that it works with 360° environments), as well as zooming into far objects.

It’s exactly this transition – from a rectangular, framed vision field to a cylindrical, boundless one – that shocks the most out of Visorama spectators. Many of them ask if the virtual environments are not being “filmed” live: as the movement changes what is seen, the closest analogy found to the device is of a surveillance camera. The attraction Visorama exerts is such that Marshall McLuhan’s memorable quote “the medium is the message” can’t stop from being recalled: for most part, the device’s novelty and it’s possibilities make the observers leave aside the interest for the pre-existent narrative and go out exploring details of the panoramas other than those explicited by its narrator(s) and protagonist(s).

The room disposition also contributes for this “detour” of the spectator from the narrative’s pre-existing path. A projection on the wall opposed to the device (that replicates what is seen by its operator) and seats for the other visitors to wait their turn transforms the device’s operator in a kind of movie theater projectionist (at a museum drive-in), in which the audience reaction changes the course of the movie – their ovation or disapproval changes the projectionist behavior. The active spectator, traditionally a voyeur, is now object to the passive spectators voyeurism (this classification as passive or active being ultimately irrelevant, as both groups influence the content going on screen).

Indeed, there is no “detour in the narrative” when talking about panoramic devices, especially Visorama. Here, the narrative is built by the free navigation of the spectator: both his eyes’ direction and his interactive choices shift the environment conditions. In a broader sense, even external interferences, intentionally planned inside the room’s architecture, take a part in the narrative. In Visorama, the narrative is made out of waits and gaps: the parts where the observer halts and the places he ignores.

It’s in this field, where the use of different medias, interactivity and mutual interference are the narrative’s building blocks, that Visorama finds it’s paths for further development. The evolution of hardware and software generate possibilities for better user immersion and different interactive applications. At the same time, both an exploration of the performatic quality that third-part interference have on the projectionist-spectator narrative path and the refinement of the pre-existent ones inside the equipment’s memory help creating a production know-how native to the device. This know-how simultaneously consolidates and spreads a range of possibilities for developing content for Visorama and the architecture of its room.

André Parente is a teacher at Escola de Comunicação of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, since 1989. He got his PHD degree in Cinema in 1987 from Université Paris VIII, under direction of Gilles Deleuze. His works are constituted by experimental and conceptual pieces, including a wide variety of formats, such as installations, interactive work, single channel videos and short films. His research interests include digital and interactive cinema and new media. He currently coordinates N-Imagem (Núcleo de Tecnologia da Imagem – www.eco.ufrj.br/n-imagem). His is the author of the following books: Yasujiro Ozu: o extraordinário cineasta do cotidiano (1990); Imagem-máquina. A era das tecnologias do virtual (1993); Sobre o cinema do simulacro (Pazulin, 1998), O virtual e o hipertextual (1999); Narrativa e modernidade, o cinema experimental, direto e disnarrativo (2000); Tramas da Rede (2004).