The art of Jeffrey Shaw and Expanded Cinema

When I was a HKBU undergraduate student, I was very honored to get a chance to be a guide of the Visualisation Research Centre, a project lead by Mr Shaw, trying its 180-degree projection cinema and 360-degree LED cinema. It was a very amazing experience. Mr Shaw had briefly explained with us about his concept and the project the project that he is on-going, and that was the first time I know the concept of expended cinema.

There are different approaches in the concept of expended cinema. A great example will be the Legible City, a famous work from Mr Shaw. In 2023, I have been to an exhibition named Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen at Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning. One of the exhibited work was this work and I do have a taste with that. The structure of it is quite simple: a bike, a screen, and a button in front of you and you can choose the map you want to walk through. It is interesting that the cities are replaced with the words that are related to that city and you can move your vision though riding on the bicycle. It was something simple that we can create in nowadays, but what truly amazed me was how early Mr Shaw was investing into this topic. He expended the cinema experience, not just only watching, but to participate or to interact with the cinema, which is also known as expended reality nowadays. It is impressive that he had already held such a vision in the 80’s.

 Legible City, 1989

When Mr Shaw was showing his current work at the Visualisation Research Centre, he had explained to us that the purpose of those advance cinema is to create a immersive space where audience can participate together, sharing their thoughts in real-time. It sounds something simple, but that is what the latest AR and VR systems cannot bring to us. It is not a term that only applies on the art field, but also entertainment and documentary, but the most important concept is the way to enhance the whole cinema experience, letting audience to actively interact and changing datas, but not just only passively receiving information which we do in the cinema most of the time.

360-degree cinema in the Visualisation Research Centre