Full Description
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume brings together contributions by distinguished experts from different disciplinary fields for a multidimensional view on immersion in the visual arts and media. In the current media debate, immersion has frequently been linked to the advent of digital technology and its capacity to provide vivid sensations of being placed in or surrounded by an artificial space. The idea of 'liquidity' contained in this promise to plunge into another world informs wide areas of contemporary cultural imagination, referring to a myriad of phenomena that relate to experiences of uncertainty and instability, of complexity and change. Considering the fact, however, that the idea of 'liquid' spaces appeared long before the digital creation of augmented or virtual environments, the contributors to this volume trace its reemerging throughout the history of the visual arts and media. By focusing on selected works of painting and architecture, photography and cinema, video installation and media art, they explore the variability of immersive experiences according to the different media environments and interfaces that constitute the actual sites of historically shifting relations between media and users.
Contributors are: Matthias Bauer, Jörg von Brincken, Robin Curtis, Burcu Dogramaci, Thomas Elsaesser, Ole W. Fischer, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, Ursula Frohne, Henry Keazor, Matthias Krüger, Katja Kwastek, Fabienne Liptay, Karl Prümm, Martin Warnke.
Contents
Introduction
Burcu Dogramaci & Fabienne Liptay
Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media
Part 1: Materials and Sensations of Immersion
Burcu Dogramaci
Water, Steam, Light:
Artistic Materials of Immersion
Robin Curtis
Immersion and Abstraction as Measures of Materiality
Katja Kwastek
Immersed in Reflection:
The Aesthetic Experience of Interactive Media Art
Fabienne Liptay
Neither Here nor There:
The Paradoxes of Immersion
Jörg von Brincken
Phantom-Drug-Death Ride:
The Psycho-sensory Dynamic of Immersion in Gaspar Noé's Enter
the Void
Part 2: Archaeologies and Technologies of Immersion
Karl Prümm
From the Unchained to the Ubiquitous Motion-Picture Camera:
Camera Innovations and Immersive Effects
Gundolf S. Freyermuth
From Analog to Digital Image Space:
Toward a Historical Theory of Immersion
Martin Warnke
On the Spot:
The Double Immersion of Virtual Reality
Ursula Frohne
Expansion of the Immersion Zone:
Military Simulacra between Strategic Training and Trauma
Thomas Elsaesser
Immersion between Recursiveness and Reflexivity: Avatar
Part 3: Landscapes and Architectures of Immersion
Henry Keazor
Projection Rooms:
Film as an Immersive Medium in the Architecture of Jean Nouvel
Ole W. Fischer
"The Treachery of Images":
Architecture, Immersion, and the Digital Realm
Matthias Krüger
Painting Immersion:
Hans Thoma's Landscapes
Matthias Bauer
Immersive Exhibition Design:
Titanic Belfast and the Concept of Scenography
Notes on Contributors
Index of Names
