Le Passage – an archaeology of spatial transitions

The author reflects on the usage and development of the zoom ‘passage’ and its various forms from the early cinema of the 1920s to the expanding concept of a scaling zoom towards a Cosmic View (Boerke, 1957) and the usage of cosmic zooms in todays fulldome theatres/ planetariums. Today various zoom effects are being used at daily routine. The navigation inside geographical visualization tools is naturally embedded in our daily media experience while using mobile devices, car navigational tools and other applications. All the more a critical perspective on the impact is needed. This article compares the different techniques used in Google Maps and in Fulldome theatres and argues that the usage of digital geographical tools and their inherent zoom structures change our mind concept of local environments, earth and spatial knowledge.