The New Infinity: Visuelle Kunst und Musik in Planetarien / Visual Art and Music in Planetariums

A record of The New Infinity, the Berliner Festspiele programme that treated the planetarium dome as a gallery for contemporary art and commissioned new fulldome works for it.

Conceived by Thomas Oberender within the Festspiele's Immersion strand and produced with Planetarium Hamburg, the series opened the projection and sound infrastructure of planetariums to artists of the digital age. This publication reflects on the history of the planetarium and its possibilities as an exhibition space and documents the commissioned works, among them pieces by Agnieszka Polska, Robert Lippok & Lucas Gutierrez and the collective Metahaven. Texts by Ulrike Bergermann, Michaela French, Metahaven, Thomas Oberender and David OReilly run in German and English. Designed by the Berlin studio Eps51 and published by Walther König in 2019; 88 pages in a tall paperback format.

Oberender directed the Berliner Festspiele from 2012 to 2021 and built its Immersion programme around virtual reality, 360-degree film and dome projection. The book belongs with the library's holdings on media art and on the exhibition formats that lie outside the white cube.