What is the line between science and magic?
Investigating Technologies of the Occult
Imponderable is Tony Oursler’s expansive archive-based project investigating the occult prehistories of modern media: stage magic, spirit photography, telekinesis, pseudoscience, early cinema, optical illusion, and the technologies through which belief becomes image. Developed from Oursler’s personal collection of more than 2,500 photographs, documents, publications, and objects dating back to the early eighteenth century, the project unfolded as an exhibition, film, installation, and publication.
Tony Oursler’s “5D Cinema” Film
At the center of the project was Imponderable, an immersive feature-length film presented in a 5D cinematic environment. Using a contemporary version of Pepper’s Ghost, the nineteenth-century phantasmagoric illusion, the film extended Oursler’s archive into a cinematic séance, where projected bodies, archival fragments, voices, apparitions, and sensory effects produced an unstable field between evidence and hallucination. Rather than treating the paranormal as mere subject matter, the film turned cinema itself into a mediumistic apparatus: an instrument for staging doubt, fascination, projection, and belief.
My Role
The film required precise synchronization across projection, sound, and physical effects. I worked on the 5D cinema system and content, designing and programming the playback software and hardware, in addition to creating the film’s spatial sound design. Built in Max/MSP with custom code, the system coordinated multichannel holographic video, surround sound, DMX-controlled lighting, scent, wind, and vibration into a tightly timed theatrical environment that supported the film’s movement between cinematic illusion and séance.
Presentation + Recognition
Originally commissioned and produced by the LUMA Foundation, Imponderable was presented at LUMA Arles in 2015, LUMA Westbau Zurich in 2015–16, and the Museum of Modern Art in 2016–17. The film was acquired into MoMA’s Media and Performance collection, and The Imponderable Archive was named by Hal Foster among his “Best of 2016” in Artforum.
Project Credits & Information
- Project type
- Exhibition
- Partner
- LUMA Foundation, Museum of Modern Art
- Agency
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- Role
- System Programmer, Sound Designer, Production
- Credits
- Maximilian Lauter: System Architecture & Programming, Sound Design, Production. Michael Christopher (Sonic Platforms): Surround Sound Design & Mixing
- Press
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- Website
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- Date
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