‘Infinity Room’ is an immersive environment project by Refik Anadol developed during his second MFA studies UCLA’s Design Media Arts Department under the guidance of Professor Jennifer Steinkamp, Casey Reas and Christian Moeller in the fall quarter of 2012 . The project is an integral part of the artist’s ongoing ‘Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments,’ which is research on audio/visual installations using immersion, the state of consciousness where an immersant’s awareness of physical self is transformed by being surrounded in an engrossing environment, often artificial with data or sensors, creating a perception of presence in a non-physical world.

In this project, ‘infinity’ was chosen as a concept, a radical effort to deconstruct the framework of this illusory space and transgress the normal boundaries of the viewing experience to set out to transform the conventional flat cinema projection screen into a three-dimensional kinetic and architectonic space of visualization by using contemporary algorithms.

Light and data is the major element in the experiment, used to blur and interconnect the boundaries between the two realms actual/fictional and physical/virtual. It signifies the threshold between the simulacrum space created by the projection technology, and the physical space where the viewer stands.

The experiments discuss the inherent spatial qualities of immersive virtual environments and their effect on the embodied person. Through the presented framework, the experiment intends to question the relativity of perception and how invisible data may inform the apprehension of our surroundings.

Instead of treating the medium as an escape hatch into a disembodied techno‑utopian dream, the project positions it as a way back: a brief suspension of our habitual perceptions and cultural biases that lets us—if only for a moment—see ourselves and the world afresh.

Updates on the project;
– Wood Street Galleries – New Edition called DATALAND exhibited on Fri, Jan 25 – Sun, Apr 7, 2019
– In ZKM’s permanent art collection – 2019.