ABSTRACT
A state-commissioned battle epic in the form of a monumental panorama painting is hardly ripe with the promise of innovative aesthetic effects, especially as the immensity of scale as an example of socialist realism’s visual vocabulary had been disavowed by the 1980s. The panorama is generally understood as one of the earliest formats of immersive art. The perspectival panorama painting has been the medium through which the fundamentals of immersive aesthetics have found expression. Numerous theatre installations are organised as pathways: members of the audience follow a sequential spatial arrangement that demands that they go from place to place, scene to scene and story to story, whether on their own or in a group. A common type of theatre installation follows a system of simultaneity that is not bound to linear direction of movement.
