Big Tent: A Portable Immersive Intermedia Environment

Abstract

Big Tent, a large scale portable environment for 360 degree immersive video and audio artistic presentation and research, is described and initial experiences are reported. Unlike other fully-surround environments of considerable size, Big Tent may be easily transported and setup in any space with adequate foot print, allowing immersive, interactive content to be brought to non-typical audiences and environments. Construction and implementation of Big Tent focused on maximizing portability by minimizing setup and tear down time, crew requirements, maintenance costs, and transport costs. A variety of different performance and installation events are discussed, exploring the possibilities Big Tent presents to contemporary multi-media artistic creation.