A Machine for Viewing

An echo of a VR experience reverberates through an empty cinema.

In 1970, filmmaker Peter Kubelka designed a movie auditorium in which carefully controlled sight lines and black velvet caused all but the screen to disappear into darkness. He referred to his invisible cinema as “a machine for viewing.” In these adventures in vision, directors Oscar Raby, Richard Misek, and Charlie Shackleton use real-time VR experience, live performance, and video essay to transform the Egyptian theater into “machines for viewing” to explore how we watch films.