Raumbilder und ihre Gebrauchsweisen

The viewing of stereoscopic images – a mass medium around 1900 and an early form of virtual reality – is subject to different organizational forms depending on its usage. However, what is common to the visual experiences of such spatial images is that they are characterized by a transport into the image space, yet they remain media-artificial experiences: on one hand, the stereoscopic spatial image is a perfected visual illusion of reality, while on the other hand, in viewing spatial images, what is depicted can only be considered superficially and remains inaccessible to the other senses. In this way, the bodily and synesthetic experience in viewing spatial images is always limited. Charlotte Bruns thoroughly explores the stereoscopic viewing of spatial images, its immersive potentials, and the societal uses and effects of this image media technology. Specific apparatuses and viewing techniques for the three-dimensional perception of spatial images, design conventions, and social frameworks of observation enable spatial images to represent spatially distant, temporally past, morally forbidden, and epistemically closed subjects.