Immersive exhibition

The idea of wrapping the viewer in a picture is older than electronics. In 1787 the painter Robert Barker patented a painting that ran all the way round a circular room, seen by viewers standing on a platform at the centre; such paintings came to be called panoramas, and in 1793 a rotunda built to show them opened in Leicester Square, London. Today most immersive exhibitions use projection. Projection mapping uses software to fit images onto walls and floors, and even onto trees and buildings, so that the picture follows uneven surfaces. Another way is virtual reality: with a headset on, the view changes as you turn your head. Taipei's current examples differ. At Huashan's MAGiC BOX, Planet Park and Wandering Gaia project images onto the whole room, and the environments and creatures in them react to visitors' movements; The Luminous Garden at Songshan lights the trees and historic buildings of the Baroque Garden with lamps and projection; and in The Vanished Pharaoh visitors wear headsets and walk through a 1:1 reconstruction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

First stand still and watch for a while, then walk or reach out, and compare whether the images change because of you. Notice, too, where the projection comes from.

Once inside this space, are you looking at a work, or are you in it? What changes because of you?

• Installation art 裝置藝術→Installation art also lets visitors walk into a work, but it usually builds the space from real objects and materials rather than projected images.