Architecture and Digital Exhibitions the Einstein Tower World

Abstract

This work is part of a general research about three-dimensional worlds usability issues, aimed at analysing the current points of strength and weakness of immersive navigation in virtual worlds on the net and at developing new cognitive artefacts to improve the quality of these experiences. The Einstein Tower World, a system conceived in occasion of the German Expressionism exhibition held in 1997 at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, can be seen as a first implementation of the results achieved so far by our research. The Einstein Tower, a sun observatory built in Potsdam from 1919 to 1923 by Erich Mendelsohn and chosen as a symbol of the real exhibition in Venice, becomes the focus of a virtual exhibition where architecture, paintings, manifestos, cinema fragments and music melt into a unique composition, a small account of gesamtkunstwerk (an integrated esthetical experience achieved by eliminating the divisions between architecture, music and visual arts) proposed by expressionist artists.