Call for Proposals  The World at a Glance — Panoramic and Peep Technologies

The International Panorama Council together with Lusofona University Early Visual Media Lab and the Art History Institute (IHA, NOVA-FCSH/IN2PAST) invite scholars, artists, panorama enthusiasts and visual media researchers to submit proposals for presentations that explore the theme “The World at a Glance. Panoramic and Peep Technologies.’” This recasting of Robert Barker’s original title for his invention (1787), “Nature at a Glance” (in French, “La Nature à Coup d’ Oeil”), will explore the modern desire to experience the world visually through panoramic or peep technologies and to embark in virtual travels. Panoramas and panoramic imagery shared these early immersive experiences with (itinerant) peepshows, cosmoramas, neoramas, dioramas, and, among others, in the domestic space, zograscopes, stereoscopic photography, graphoscopes and polyoramas. These theatres of visuality were key achievements in art, education and science, fostering visual curiosity and new skills of looking. Either engaging a distant or a proximate gaze, requiring lenses or a specific vantage point on a viewing platform, these technologies made the world in all its aspects admirable and available at a glance. In addition to challenging the visual sensorium, panoramic and peep technologies often intersected and mobilized a synesthesic universe. By exploring their coexistence and intermediality, new light will be shed on the visual cultures and worldviews they promoted. 

This next IPC conference in Lisbon will showcase such intersections and remediations with the exhibition The Cosmorama: The 19th-Century Hidden Travels, held at the Portuguese Cinematheque. Curated by the research project Curiositas. Peeping Before Virtual Reality, this exhibition will draw on extensive historical research that unearthed the cultural history of the European Cosmoramas. It will include physical and virtual recreations of cosmorama rooms, showcasing Panorama and Cosmorama artists such as Hubert Sattler from Salzburg.

We welcome proposals for field reports, creative presentations, media presentations, and scholarly papers of up to 20 minutes in length that focus on panoramic or/and peep technologies, their specificities, intermedialities, socio-cultural and political roles, as well as their current digital and virtual cultures, and their conservation, display and mediation challenges.    

The IPC conference will present a diverse range of session topics based on the proposals, as well as workshops, round tables and visits. It will be of interest to academics, professionals, students and enthusiasts of art, visual media, art history, conservation and preservation, cultural heritage, design, history, museum practice, panorama management, restoration, virtual reality, and visual culture, as well as to thinkers and makers from other disciplines or whose work is transdisciplinary with an interest in immersive and peep media, media archaeology or any other related field. 

Additional details including special workshops, keynote lectures, and a post-conference tour will be added to this page in coming weeks. 

Proposals must be in Microsoft Word (.docx) format and include: 

• Title of the presentation
• Author’s name, affiliation, complete mailing address and email 
• 300-word abstract 
• Author’s biography (150–200 words)
• 3–5 Keywords 

The final conference program with abstracts and keywords will be published in the “Conference Report” section of the Panoramic and Immersive Media Studies (PIMS) Yearbook, Volume 3, 2025. Presenters will also have the opportunity to contribute full-length works for publication consideration in other sections of the PIMS Yearbook. Learn more by exploring the past call for proposals, PIMS Yearbook Call for Proposals, Volume 2, 2025, and the De Gruyter page for the PIMS Yearbook, Volume 1, 2024.

The conference will take place July 2–4, 2025, with an optional post-conference excursion on July 5.

Deadline for proposal submission: January 27, 2025

Please submit all abstracts and queries related to submissions to secretariat@panoramacouncil.org 

Acceptance notifications will be emailed by February 24, 2025

For more information about the International Panorama Council and the Conference, please visit – http://panoramacouncil.org/ 

Conference Registration will be open March 3, 2025.