Panorama : I’m Feeling Lucky

Created by Canadian artists Timothy Thomasson and Tatum Wilson, Panorama: I’m Feeling Lucky is a real-time computer-generated fulldome animation that questions relationships to image, geography, virtual space, historical media technology, and mass data collection systems. 

The artwork features a 3D virtual landscape that is both historically and geographically ambiguous, generated in real-time using game engine technology. This virtual landscape is populated with thousands of figures sourced from the vast pool of 360-degree image data collected by Google Street View. These figures are processed by a deep neural network, a type of artificial intelligence algorithm, which transforms them into three-dimensional models, each frozen in their captured pose by Google. The work interrogates mass image collection systems, as many of these individuals may not have been aware that their photo was taken, let alone anticipate being placed in this new, strange setting. Many thousands of figures sourced from all over the world are randomly selected to inhabit the endless landscape together.

The work takes into consideration the panorama paintings of the 19th century as objects of historical, cultural, and perceptual significance, and situates them within contemporary media contexts. Panoramas are rotunda structures in which large 360 degree paintings depict sublime natural landscapes, battle scenes, religious events, or large cityscapes, characterized by their lack of framed boundaries and the inability to be viewed in their entirety with a single gaze. These panorama structures are theorized as part of the lineage of immersive media technologies and can be analyzed as proto-cinematic, virtual reality, or dome forms. 

With Panorama: Im Feeling Lucky, the virtual environment is generated and populated procedurally, so the panoramic image becomes infinite as the virtual camera slowly pans across the 360 degree landscape endlessly, portraying the stillness of painting at odds with the expectation of fast, high-speed movement and technical progression of digital imagery.

The artists benefited from the SAT’s art residency program to adapt Panorama: Im Feeling Lucky to the fulldome format, as the artwork was initially created for flat screens 

Project Conception & Visuals: Timothy Thomasson

Sound Design & Composition: Tatum Wilson