Voices of VR #1693: A Survey of the Indie Immersive Dome Community Trends with “The Rift” Directors & 4Pi Productions
Dec 7, 2025
Janire Najera, creative director at 4Pi Productions and co-founder of Calvia Lab, and Matthew Wright, artistic director at Culture Lab, explore the intriguing realm of immersive domes. They discuss how their backgrounds in dance and photography shaped their innovative approach to dome storytelling. Topics include the challenges of live capture and audience comfort, the historical significance of domes, and the potential of shared immersive experiences to foster empathy. They also emphasize the need for better accessibility and standards to support grassroots creators.
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From Panoramas To Spherical Installations
- Matthew Wright transformed panoramic photography into spherical installations to place audiences inside images rather than outside them.
- This led naturally to building domes to present true spherical viewpoints as immersive environments.
Building A Venue To Break Access Barriers
- Matthew Wright describes opening Culture Lab as a testbed because planetariums were hard for artists to access and program flexibly.
- They created a venue to enable live performance, experimentation, and wider artist access to domes.
Flexibility Versus Planetarium Constraints
- Flexible, seatless domes (like SAT Montreal) allow any art form and reconfiguration for projects beyond fixed planetarium constraints.
- Creating for planetariums still requires considering fixed seating tilt and dominant audience sightlines.