Before the headset there was the panorama. Since 2002 one line of work has built places to inhabit rather than frames to watch — a photographed Pompeii you can walk, an invention for stitching thousands of panoramas into one dense space, an Andean descent in 8K, a stadium you sit inside. The frame dissolves; the viewer stands somewhere.
2002 — 2020 · photographic vr of ancient pompeii
In 2002 a photographic shoot of ancient Pompeii — thousands of photographs of its streets and houses — was built into navigable QuickTime-VR panoramas: the ruined city as a place to walk, vantage by vantage, on a desktop. The work kept returning across the 2000s, and in 2020 the original imagery was re-extracted as 8K VR video.
3,769 source photographs·qtvr panoramas·8k vr-video re-extraction, 2020
2005 — 2009 · a photographic-vr invention
QuickTime VR could pan within a single point of view; Dense Space set out to let you walk — a dense mesh of some 2,500 360° panoramas captured about an inch apart, so a real photographed space becomes traversable. A purpose-built robotic camera cart — the "Nomad" — did the inch-by-inch capture.
~2,500 panoramas·~1-inch spacing·"nomad" robotic camera cart
He filed a provisional patent for the method in 2006. When a prior-art search revealed that published research — Aliaga et al.'s "Sea of Images" — had already established the same architecture, he chose not to pursue the full patent.
2003 · the limbo mode — a qtvr building
Its Limbo mode is a photorealistic century-old building assembled from some 190 QuickTime-VR panoramas linked by programming — no plot handed over; moving through the rooms uncovers the story one vantage at a time. Proto-VR, two decades before the headset works — and the same disc holds the first modular film.
~190 qtvr panoramas·linked by programming·cd-rom
First Prize, Internet/Multimedia — Moscow International Film Festival · included in George Landow's Hypertext 3.0. Also one of the four modular films — Modular Cinema.
2021 · cinematic vr, modular
An Andean descent in cinematic VR — more than 700 versions in 8K with ambisonic sound, drawn from Andean cosmology. The headset arrives, and the modular method comes with it. Made with the Universidad de Cuenca.
700+ versions·8k·ambisonic
Four Best-Film awards · Ann Arbor Film Festival premiere · a 23-festival record. Also one of the four modular films — Modular Cinema.
2023 — 2024 · 360° vr documentary
A stereoscopic, ambisonic 360° documentary filmed at the 2023 Homeless World Cup at Sacramento State — the viewer seated inside the stadium, among athletes as skilled social agents. The immersive line turns documentary: presence in place of pity.
7:25·stereoscopic·ambisonic·six-camera rig
Best Virtual Reality Short — REELS International Film Festival, 2024 · Finalist, Best Virtual Reality — ORION International Film Festival, 2024.
in production
A VR documentary now in production — the immersive line continues.
The immersive line and the modular line share a root — A Space of Time and Uku Pacha belong to both. Everything immersive, on one horizon: see it on the timeline →