Video by MONA productions // Oct. 10, 2018
Berliner Festspiele’s planetarium-inspired exhibition ‘The New Infinity’ in Mariannenplatz is host to a rotating cast of artists and performers throughout this month. To kick things off, game designer and artist David OReilly offered his immersive Eye of the Dream projection: a fusion of imagination, technology and science. In under two hours, viewers experienced different moments in the history of the universe, told through OReilly’s visual narrative and aesthetic experimentation.
Spiralling constantly towards visitors, who reclined in a covered dome with planetarium-like seating, was a quasi-kaleidoscope vision of small, recognizable animated objects that began close together and swirled out. The little icons represent points in time from the Big Bang until the present, including everything from rabbits and stones, to carriages, strawberries, street signs and umbrellas. OReilly’s conceptualization of time and modernization corresponds to the Berliner Festspiele’s use of the planetarium aesthetic, which symbolizes the revolutionary technology used to understand the natural world. ‘The New Infinity’ project maintains that “in combination with digital technology and mobile architecture, the planetarium can enable new experiences, create new communities and facilitate events, also for an audience that the arts often find hard to reach.”
The next performance begins today, with a work by Fatima Al Qadiri & Transforma. The program closes on October 14th with a concert by William Basinski and Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand.
