CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

In the installation INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION visitors can interact with historical photographs from the time of the Industrial Revolution. Pictures of factories, mines, assembly line, production sites and connected administration buildings convey a fascination for the technical achievements of the time, not unlike the one that can be felt towards the present digital revolution.

In part, the images selected present the mine Zollern ll/lV in Dortmund, others show factories and production sites from all over the world. Many of the images accessible in the installation are stereo photographs from the middle of the 19th century. They were looked at through a so-called stereoscope that allowed a three-dimensional view.

Based upon the idea of combining those historical pictures of the Industrial Revolution with the digital technology of our time and opening them to be experienced by the visitors, Sommerer and Mignonneau created this interactive and immersive virtual environment integrating the audience.

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION allows the visitor to enter the historical images and to interact with them. When entering the installation, visitors see themselves on the projection screen being set into one of those pictures. By moving within the real space of the environment they may simultaneously experience the virtual three-dimensional space of the historic photograph.