Stereo Spectacular: Reconstructing the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867 through Immersive Stereoscopic Media
Stereo Spectacular is a groundbreaking collaboration between EPFL, MIT, and the University of Paris Cité that unites 19th-century stereoscopic immersive media with contemporary virtual reality technologies. The project reconstructs the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867 using archival stereographic pairs, creating an immersive visitor experience that restages and deconstructs the scopic and cultural regimes of the 19th-century World’s Fair.
Hosted by Napoleon III on the Champ-de-Mars, the Exposition Universelle of 1867 was a monumental event that marked a turning point in visual culture. Attracting over 11 million international visitors and featuring more than 50,000 exhibitors from 32 countries, the exposition was extensively documented through stereography—the primary photographic mode of the time. Thousands of stereoscopic views were captured, providing a rich visual record of the exposition’s opulent pavilions, richly-furnished exhibits, and ephemeral architectural displays.
Stereo Spectacular leverages an extensive dataset of over 1,400 digitized stereo views from public and private collections. These images are meticulously restored, augmented, and geolocated on a virtual, art-tectonic wireframe reconstruction of the exhibition palace and grounds. By cross-referencing historical documents such as official exhibition plans, visitor accounts and drawings, and other archival materials, images are embedded at points that reflect the original positions of the objects and scenes they display, allowing 21st-century visitors to stand in reconstructed historical viewpoints. The art-tectonic aesthetic evokes the awe-inspiring grandeur of the historical event, all the while creating space for reinterpretations and imaginary interventions by visitors today. In this navigable virtual model of the exposition’s interior and exterior architecture, users experience the restaged event and dialectically encounter views of a recent, modern past.
Advanced technologies play a pivotal role in enhancing the immersive experience through colour, sound, and narrative augmentations. AI-driven image recoloration breathes a sense of experiential realism into black-and-white photographs, while cutting-edge computer vision algorithms facilitate the integration of stereoscopic images into the virtual environment. The virtual reconstruction is further enriched through sonification. An interactive soundscape inspired by historical accounts animates the Fair’s microcosmic environments: vast gardens with aviaries and waterfalls, industrial salons with cacophonic machines, bustling restaurants, and the incessant murmur of the ever-flowing crowd. Historical visitor accounts provide the basis for voice-over narrative augmentations that marry the views with the lived experiences of visitors to the 1867 Fair. In this manner, objects and scenes are contextualized, illuminated, and rediscovered as zones of affective and aesthetic impact. Via narrative augmentations, 19th- and 21st-century visitors share a viewpoint and a sense of immersion in the expansive vista of the (re)constructed Fair universe. Via the creation of a collective, multisensory, stereographic environment, Stereo Spectacular immerses visitors into the past-and-present of an exhibitionary complex that underpins the spectacle society from the 19th-century World’s Fair and into today’s immersive technologies.
Stereo Spectacular not only revitalizes 19th-century viewing modalities but also offers a contemporary encounter with the multiple modernities that converged at this significant event. By reimagining mapping and transforming static representations into dynamic, embodied, and emotive spaces, the project presents alternative visual solutions for historic places and times. This transdisciplinary endeavor marries advanced visualization technologies, narrative sensitivity, and digital aesthetic design, stimulating further research into these images and contributing to the discourse on decolonizing perspectives in historical exhibitions.
Through the fusion of media archaeology, narrative art, and contemporary virtual reality, Stereo Spectacular bridges the past and present, offering an unparalleled exploration of the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867. By democratizing access to complex historical data via a compelling immersive experience, the project empowers both scholars and the public to engage actively with the past, shaping a deeper understanding of cultural heritage and its relevance in the modern world.
