Designed for Impact: Widescreen and 360-degree Cinematic Interiors at the Postwar World's Fair

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the design of widescreen and 360-degree cinematic interiors, both in independent cinemas and at world's fairs, in the context of ideas about sensorial experience particular to postwar American technological culture. Based on primary research in the Cinerama Corporation Collection and the New York World's Fair 1964–5 Corporation Records, this article shows how these hybrid sites were shaped by a complex web of actors and interests representing the entertainment industry, corporations, government, inventors, architects, world's fair planners, and the latest thinking in science. Through their design and promotional rhetoric these cinematic interiors actively sought to establish new physical and conceptual relationships between the visitor's body and the technology on display. As a specific design concern, the act of viewing was given a new kind of experiential and participatory logic. These spectacular interiors were thus ultimately performative spaces, whose intended meaning and effect was shaped by the institutional, cultural, and political agendas of those who commissioned and promoted these sites.