In Bogotá, the fulldome conversation is expanding well beyond the planetarium as a science venue and into a broader cultural proposition: a place where moving image, research, and spatial storytelling converge. That shift is embodied by artists and educators like Jorge Bandera, whose practice sits at the intersection of art, design, technology, science, and interaction. His work points to a larger global trend in immersive media: domes are no longer simply screens overhead, but responsive environments for experimentation, performance, and public encounter.
What makes Bandera especially relevant to the current moment is the way his practice treats the dome as both medium and method. “Research-creation is central to his process,” and that framing matters. It signals a mode of making in which concept and tool develop together, rather than one merely servicing the other. In a field that often oscillates between spectacular presentation and educational utility, this approach offers a third path: immersive work as inquiry.
Bandera’s output spans fulldome films, real-time audiovisual performances, 3D animation, generative visuals, digital art, and interactive installations. That range reflects the increasingly hybrid nature of planetarium and dome programming worldwide, where venues are looking for work that can move fluidly between exhibition, performance, and pedagogy. For curators and directors, artists with this breadth are valuable not only because they can fill a program slot, but because they can help define what an immersive venue can be.
At the center of Bandera’s visual language is a fascination with perception. His environments explore “the relationships between the body, space, perception, and technology,” a phrase that captures why dome-based work continues to resonate with audiences. The dome alters scale, orientation, and attention in ways flat screens cannot. It surrounds rather than frames, and that encirclement changes the viewer’s relationship to image. In Bandera’s hands, abstraction and organic form become tools for probing that relationship, creating experiences that feel at once cinematic and bodily.
The venues that have presented his work underscore the field’s global reach: from Bogotá institutions such as the Cinemateca and the Festival Domo Lleno to international platforms in Germany, Wales, Brazil, Poland, Belarus, Romania, Thailand, Russia, and Dubai. That circulation is significant. It shows that fulldome culture is no longer confined to a few established hubs; it is now supported by a network of festivals, planetariums, media art institutions, and interdisciplinary festivals that treat immersive work as a serious artistic language.
There is also a strong curatorial impulse in Bandera’s practice. His project Desorientaciones, which gathers seven artistic approaches to fulldome, suggests an important curatorial idea: the dome can be a site of productive instability. Rather than promising total immersion as a seamless illusion, it can reveal how perception is assembled, interrupted, and remade. That perspective aligns with a broader shift in immersive arts toward critical immersion — work that is technically sophisticated, but also intellectually and sensorially self-aware.
For the industry, artists like Bandera help expand the field in two directions at once. First, they deepen its artistic credibility by showing that dome work can sustain conceptual complexity and aesthetic ambition. Second, they broaden its social and institutional relevance by connecting immersive media to research, education, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In that sense, the fulldome space is not merely a venue category; it is an evolving ecosystem.
As planetariums, museums, and cultural institutions seek programming that can attract new audiences without diluting artistic rigor, practitioners who move comfortably between science, design, and audiovisual experimentation are becoming essential. Bandera’s practice suggests a future in which domes are not only places to view images of the cosmos, but places to rethink how images shape consciousness itself.
Originally reported by via fddb.org on 2026-10-15 02:39:00.
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