rooms built for the camera
THE Olympus Perspective Playgrounda short and specific series of exhibitions, traveled across Europe between 2013 and 2017. The concept saw artists, designers and technicians construct sequences of immersive environments that photo enthusiasts and professionals were invited to explore with a camera in hand.
Designed by Studio Leigh Sachwitz and produced by flora&faunavisions (not The Storytelling Company), the interactive the project works as a fully built system. Walls, lighting platforms, circulation paths and signage develop alongside each installation so that the experience reads as a continuous spatial script. Guests are given an Olympus camera upon entry and from that point on, each room is calibrated for use through the lens. They left with an SD card full of images, although the most interesting takeaway was how each space taught them to look.
It started with early editions in Berlin in 2013 – 2015 and then expanded to a traveling format in cities such as Hamburg, Amsterdam, Zurich, Vienna and Munich. It eventually culminated in a larger-scale iteration at the Palais de Tokyo in 2017 before returning to Kraftwerk Berlin later that year.
Spring Dragon Tail, Philip Beesley Studio2014. image © Ken Schluchtman
a framework for dreams in built space
Olympus Perspective Playground is a hands-on exercise in building environments that hold the imagination without drifting into abstraction. Each installation gives form to a specific visual condition, and each condition is linked to a spatial decision that you can locate.
Take the Numen/For Use’s Tube (see here). A suspended, flexible tunnel extends through the volume, made of elastic fabric that responds to body weight. As you climb inside, the structure compresses and expands, changing the curvature of the surface around you. The camera reads these displacements as a continuous field, removing edges and corners. Space becomes a soft envelope that captures movement as distortion.
Our Color Reflection by Liz West (see here) works differently. Here, mirrored panels and hanging filters divide the room into corner fragments. Colored light passes through acrylic sheets and bounces off reflective surfaces, so each step produces a new alignment of hues. You can track the geometry in plan view, but photography flattens it into multi-layered color fields. The room teaches how reflection can create depth without adding physical mass.
Our color reflection, Liz West2016. image © Klaus Bossemeyer
Tube, Numen/For use2016. image © Numen/For Use
building conditions for imagination
In Vanishing Point by United Visual Artists (see here), linear light elements stretch across the room in strict alignment. The setting is based on perspective: from one position, the lines converge to a single point. Set aside and the composition dissolves. The installation makes the visual angle a structural element. It shows how a room can be built around a single visual condition and then held together through alignment.
Sonic Water by Sven Meyer and Kim Pörksen (see here) introduces sound and fluid as active materials. The vibrations travel through the water, creating visible patterns that shift in real time. The basin, the lighting and the sound system are coordinated together so that the surface becomes both an instrument and an image generator. His photography freezes a moment that the body experiences as continuous movement.
null point, United Visual Artists2013. image © United Visual Artists
Sonic Water, Sven Meyer + Kim Porksen, 2013. image © Elfenmaschine
the travel series of small dream worlds
In all its iterations, from the first editions in Berlin to the expanded version at the Palais de Tokyo, the Olympus Perspective Playground grows in scale and technical scope. Later versions incorporated microscopy and endoscopy, expanding the idea of spatial exploration beyond the human scale. You move from room-sized installations to images created from internal materials or bodies, yet the logic remains consistent. Every environment is built around a condition that can be controlled, recorded and understood through use.
These facilities do not require interpretation first. They borrow a set of spatial tools and allow you to edit them. Mirrors, stretched fabric, projected light, vibrating water. Each is set up so that a camera can translate the experience into an image that carries some of the space with it.
Fantasy is framed as something you can prototype. Each room acts as a small environment where an idea is promoted enough to become tangible. Moving from one space to another, visitors begin to read the “playground” as a series of tests. Some are based on geometry, others on material behavior, others on perception shaped by light.
Sinking, squid2016. image © Ken Schluchtmann
