Standing in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room at The Broad is a little like being lost in space: alone on a platform, you’re thrust for just under a minute into total solitude among darkness and an infinite number of twinkling lights. At the back of your mind, you know you’re in a museum—but your body is on a completely different wavelength. In that moment, you’re floating in fantasy.

What is it about immersion that provides such relief and inspiration? Experiences like Kusama’s are a jump-cut from one world to another. And though Infinity Mirrored Room may take this premise to the next level, the concept itself has been a popular form of entertainment for centuries.

Consider the panorama. Long before it was a photography technique, it was an all-enveloping painting applied to the walls of a circular room. Invented in 1787 by Robert Barker, the painted panorama depicted faraway locales, events in history, and famous landmarks. Enveloped by the scene, spectators were free to walk and examine the mural’s many details. (A famous panorama of Versailles, now at the Met, has an almost Where’s Waldo quality to it: visitors can find famous historical politicians painted into the scene.) Before television or the movies, before augmented reality or Real-D, the panorama was an immersive experience in media. A sort of virtual reality 1.0.

Of course, artists added their own flourishes to the medium. John Banvard, an American, created the georama in 1853 when he rendered natural landscapes in 360 degrees. Others made moving panoramas, which allowed viewers to experience a simulated journey through an environment.

Years later, we’re still avid armchair travelers. For some of us, a journey is just a scroll-through-Instagram away. For others—the Timothy Leary types, maybe—the journey can be entirely in the mind. It’s the same feeling that draws us to our favorite restaurants and most-loved books: the idea that for a moment, without moving, we can be transported.

Standing in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room at The Broad is a little like being lost in space: alone on a platform, you’re thrust for just under a minute into total solitude among darkness and an infinite number of twinkling lights. At the back of your mind, you know you’re in a museum—but your body is on a completely different wavelength. In that moment, you’re floating in fantasy.

What is it about immersion that provides such relief and inspiration? Experiences like Kusama’s are a jump-cut from one world to another. And though Infinity Mirrored Room may take this premise to the next level, the concept itself has been a popular form of entertainment for centuries.

Consider the panorama. Long before it was a photography technique, it was an all-enveloping painting applied to the walls of a circular room. Invented in 1787 by Robert Barker, the painted panorama depicted faraway locales, events in history, and famous landmarks. Enveloped by the scene, spectators were free to walk and examine the mural’s many details. (A famous panorama of Versailles, now at the Met, has an almost Where’s Waldo quality to it: visitors can find famous historical politicians painted into the scene.) Before television or the movies, before augmented reality or Real-D, the panorama was an immersive experience in media. A sort of virtual reality 1.0.

Of course, artists added their own flourishes to the medium. John Banvard, an American, created the georama in 1853 when he rendered natural landscapes in 360 degrees. Others made moving panoramas, which allowed viewers to experience a simulated journey through an environment.

Years later, we’re still avid armchair travelers. For some of us, a journey is just a scroll-through-Instagram away. For others—the Timothy Leary types, maybe—the journey can be entirely in the mind. It’s the same feeling that draws us to our favorite restaurants and most-loved books: the idea that for a moment, without moving, we can be transported.