The Favre Era Cyclorama

The panorama was fittingly described by a French journal in 1800 as a “tableau sans bones,” a “painting without boundaries.”[i] The Favre Era Cyclorama is a concept for a panorama that borrows from the tradition of large circular paintings housed in rotundas across Europe and America for much of the 19^th century. However, instead of employing the traditional technique of paint on canvas, this panorama would be constructed of hundreds of television screens displaying units of video content, which comprise a larger thematic whole. The title refers to the American sports icon Brett Favre. His record of endurance is legendary: as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, an American football institution, he has started every game from 1991 to the present, an unprecedented accomplishment in football history. The project addresses the intersection of sports and media in our society, and explores the powerful relationship sports has with its audience. The main function of this “video cyclorama” is to create an immersive environment which exhibits the totality of a subject through video—in this case Brett Favre’s entire career as documented through broadcast television in a circular space which surrounds an audience.

I first heard the word “cyclorama” from my colleague, the artist Sanford Wurmfeld. He showed me a scale model of a 360-degree abstract painting by that name which he had conceived several years earlier. Wurmfeld realized his full-scale cyclorama in 2000, a continuous field of color that modulates entirely through the chromatic spectrum, completely surrounding the viewer. Wurmfeld chose the word “cyclorama,” rather than the more traditional “panorama,” because he felt it carried a particularly American connotation.  Although I did not consciously set out to create a panorama when I initially conceived the Brett Favre project, its circular form and specifically American subject matter, and my discussions with Wurmfeld, precipitated the title Cyclorama.

 

The historical panorama was defined by a certain epic quality in its scale, cost and subject matter—built several stories high and having the diameter of a football field, it often depicted subjects, such as battle scenes, with historical significance and mass appeal. The initial investment required to build these panoramas was huge, offset by admission fees charged to visitors. According to Oliver Grau, the Battle of Sedan panorama by Anton von Werner was executed by a team of thirteen painters and cost one million gold marks to produce in 1883.[ii] Grau estimates that The Battle of Sedan required at least one million paying visitors to fully return on the initial investment—a number easily surpassed by the end of the two-decade run of the panorama. There is a strong parallel between the grandeur of the historical panorama and the spectacle of today’s sporting industry. The financially and politically huge undertaking of the historic panorama is analogous to the stadium building and fever pitch surrounding major sporting events of today. Without question, the phenomenon of any sport bears a universal connection to its fans who bring, among other things, enthusiasm and spending power to the table. When a particular player or team excels, their constituency can be mobilized to spend money on stadiums and elaborate sports museums as constant and tangible reminders of success.

The Favre Era Cyclorama would ideally be built on the scale of the historic panorama, a 360-degree bank of television screens, one television for each game of Favre’s career. Visitors would ascend a ramp or staircase and enter the Cyclorama through a passageway in the floor, and the configuration of televisions would create a large circular space surrounding the viewer. The installation of over 200 televisions could be experienced in silence, or with audio content for each of the games, available through a wireless keypad and headset. The video content would be the complete original broadcast of every game in Favre’s career—one game per screen. Because it includes every second of every game, rather than simply highlights or only the best games, the Favre Era Cyclorama would be a time capsule of popular culture and sports history from 1991 to the present. Through the inclusion of commercials the piece would reflect the passage of time, evidenced by changing fads and fashions while Favre’s participation in the sport is constant.

The concept for a panorama dedicated to the career of an athlete calls attention to the profound shared experience of fans that emerges parallel to such athletic accomplishment. Our current state of technology has made it entirely possible for a community of people throughout the world, in spite of geographical location, to participate in an athlete’s career by experiencing games not only in stadiums, but also on the radio, over the internet, and particularly through local and satellite television. This is an experience unique to our time, an ongoing event captured in minute detail and beamed around world. The Favre Era Cyclorama presents the entirety of such a shared experience in one place, at one time.

Television editing, commentary, and advertising—the “many layers… between the viewer and the game”[iii]—all serve to create, and constantly reaffirm, a mythology about the sports hero, which frames their careers in terms of winning moments, celebrity status, scandals, and lucrative contracts and endorsements. The Favre Era Cyclorama on one hand embraces the spectacle of sports, and on the other offers something different: a catalogue of every moment—winning, losing, thrilling, mundane, embarrassing or legendary. In the Cyclorama, each game holds equal weight and serves as a building block, both literally and visually, in Brett Favre’s career and in the video retrospective. Our culture typically celebrates the phenomenon of sports through relics and memorabilia of the game. For example, a sports hall of fame will display the jersey a famous athlete, a reference to a player and a team which existed in the past, invoking nostalgia and memory for the viewer. In contrast, the Cyclorama acts as both the reference and an experience unto itself. By exhibiting all the games and giving equal weight to each, the Favre Era Cyclorama transcends the personal associations fans bring to games. This immersive environment creates a physical and sensory experience of the moment, a monolithic embodiment of Favre’s epic career and the vast television spectacle surrounding it.     

 

The invention of the traditional panorama came at a particular point in European history: an era defined by travel, scientific discovery, the industrial revolution, and the rise of the middle class. As Stephan Oettermann points out, the historic panorama dually reflects the discovery of the horizon and the enclosure of the viewer.[iv] This paradox was reflected in other inventions of the day such as the hot air balloon, and the panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s circular prison design.

The late twentieth century can be defined by radical developments in communication and information technology. Only ten years ago most of us had never sent an e-mail, surfed the internet, or used a cell phone. But in this short amount of time, technology has created an immersive information environment that few of us feel we can truly live without. In the age of Google, iPods, and TiVo, the mandate of this new technology is totality. This totality is reflected in the Favre Era Cyclorama, a cultural landscape based on information.

Tim Laun
June 22, 2005