Together with the Stiftung Planetarium Berlin, we presented the world premieres of “Grey Interiors”, a post-industrial symphony by British musician Darren J. Cunningham aka Actress and the artist collective Actual Objects, and “SPIN”, a sound sculpture by Lucas Gutierrez & Robert Lippok, centered around two rotating bodies between which constantly changing sound fields unfold. We also presented the premiere of “PERSPICUS”, an audiovisual show by Florence To & Bendik Giske & Bridget Ferrill. In their three-part composition, the space constantly takes on new forms and perspectives, both tonally and architecturally, which emerge from the breathing movements of the artists.
The “Visual Music” programme track, which featured historical avant-garde films by visual artists adapted for the dome space, featured two psychedelic light paintings by light artist Bill Ham and Canadian composer Kara-Lis Coverdale, as well as a previously unpublished work by computer graphics pioneer John Whitney. These new adaptations were complemented by the meditative colour symphonies of American light artist Thomas Wilfred, whose lumia instruments establish a new art form at the intersection of technology and modern art.
Emeka Ogboh adapted for the planetarium his celebrated multi-channel sound installation “The Way Earthly Things Are Going”, which the artist conceived for documenta 14 in Athens. We presented the fulldome work “VHW7” by Greek digital artist Theo Triantafyllidis and American experimental musician Sun Araw that explores the eponymous planetoid like a galactic sculpture. And we showed a revival of David OReilly’s touching Corona collage “The End of Stories”, which presents 37 audible stories of anonymous callers about their individual experience with the pandemic.
So far, planetariums have mainly been places of science and education, and rarely spaces to experience contemporary art. Yet planetariums occupy the largest screens of our time – and the fulldome, with its sophisticated 360-degree sound technology, offers a unique spatial sound. From 2017 to 2021, the Berliner Festspiele’s programme “The New Infinity” commissioned a series of works by contemporary artists that was presented in planetariums and at fulldome festivals around the world. After the 2017 and 2018 programmes attracted almost 40,000 visitors to our mobile dome on Mariannenplatz, “The New Infinity” took place at the Zeiss-Großplanetarium in Prenzlauer Allee in 2020 and 2021.
