Immersa-Desk
CAVE with Built-in Portability

1999

Electronic Visualization Laboratory (US)

The "Immersa-Desk" (I-Desk for short) looks like a gigantic TV but is actually the little brother of the CAVE in the Ars Electronica Center’s lower level—and a first-class tool for architectural visualization.

Thanks to LCD shutter glasses, advanced control capabilities and sophisticated technology, the I-Desk offers all the advantages of the CAVE: its projection surface is large enough to completely fill the viewer's field of vision and to transport him/her into the computer-generated worlds of three-dimensional virtual realities, with which the viewer can interact in precisely the same way as in the CAVE.

Not only does the comparatively compact I-Desk make possible flights, strolls, and adventures in virtual spaces, but it is also completely portable. Developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the I-Desk thus constitutes a mobile, high-performance presentation tool which is regularly used by the Ars Electronica Center's staff for off-premises demonstrations.

The I-Desk is ideally suited for presentations of commissioned works—for example, at the Siggraph in Orlando (USA), the world's largest computer graphics convention, the Imagina in Monte Carlo, the Art Futura in Spain, or at the Media Art Symposium Stockholm during the Swedish capital's term as European City of Culture.