March 25th-28th 2008. The 3rd European workshop and conference in immersive cinema will be held in and around the University of Plymouth’s newly developed immersive vision theatre. The conference organisers have invited key-note speakers on the topics why dome? how dome? and what dome? and invite further contributions on each of these topics from the dome community. We welcome lectures or less formal presentations, as well as demonstrations or workshops in the immersive theatre and other domed environments.

“I Wish I Was A Space Man, The Fastest Guy Alive”(1).

Mike Phillips.

“Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental”(2)This paper challenges the easy absorption of immersive dome technologies into the dominant ideology of Cinema. It attempts to recover the space of the dome from the hegemony of the cinematic by providing alternative, but equally usurped, models drawn from the more recent history of digital/interactive art. The brave but flawed attempts of cinema to capture and represent temporal/spatial experiences are compared with the unique opportunities offered by dome environments that more readily embrace the new polysensory interfaces facilitated by information technologies. Whilst the origins of the blurring between these territories are explored, strategies are suggested for decoupling the dome from its superficial similarities with the cinema (moving image projection and screen) and an argument is made to understand the dome for what it ‘is’ and not what it ‘looks like’.

Notes:1: Fireball (1962). Composed by Gray, B. sung by Spencer, D.

2: A Matter of Life and Death (1946),Powell, M. Pressburger, E. Title sequence.