Immersion and Art Experience

Experimental Media Blog 3 - Carol Bales

 

Introduction

Collaborative, immersive experiences in virtual environments have resulted from 20^th century innovations in art practice and technological experimentation.  Art of the early 21^st century has been freed from many traditional boundaries as the artist, the viewer and the art object have been redefined and recontextualized.  The artist has been redefined as facilitator and co-creator, the viewer has been challenged to participate and co-create and the art object has been replaced by an art experience.  In many cases, technological innovations have been used to create or facilitate these new art experiences. 

Artists and thinkers of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries struck revolutionary attitudes toward art making.  The Italian Futurists linked creation of art with social revolution and furthered the role of the artist as technologist, experimenting with the new technology of film to create unique and novel art (pp. 10-15).  The Bauhaus Theater movement drew the viewer in as participant, breaking the “fourth wall” (pp. 16-26) and extending Wagner’s “total art experience” where a multitude of forms of expression are combined to create a more robust, more stirring experience.[1]  Mid-20^th century creation of Fluxus and Conceptual art took the form of experimentation with the forms of art and types of collaboration in order to understand and redefine art and art experience. In the post-WWII performance 4’33” (1952), John Cage questions the form of composition and performance by creating a place where a musical performance could be but isn’t.  In Opera Sextronique (1967) Nam June Paik playfully combines technology with the form of classical performance calling the seriousness of both into question.[2]  Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece further questions the role of viewer as participant, and the role of the artist as not just orchestrator of the experience, but object of the experience.[3]  Another thing these artists have in common is that they are experimenting not only with the forms of art, but with the viewer’s perception and understanding of art.  With the freedom of experimentation with artistic forms, artists experimented with new technologies, creating collaborations with engineers such as Billy Kluver’s collaborations with Robert Rauschenberg in the 1960’s.  Had the forms of art not been revolutionized by the 20^th century, had experimentation through art not been established, we might not have some of the forms of technological advancement we are developing now, such as telepresence and virtual reality. 

Immersion

Defining immersive art is not necessarily an easy task.  Where does an immersive experience take place?  In a museum? a computer lab? in your head? in real life?  The answer to these questions are “Yes” and it depends upon the artist and technology.  Immersion refers to human experience.  An immersive experience is one where the viewer is surrounded and absorbed in the art experience; their senses are stimulated in a way that is not entirely natural, the experienced is somehow staged or designed by humans.  To explore immersion we must look at how the body experiences and senses its surroundings.  The body exists in a physical space; we use our senses to perceive the world around us, using cognitive abilities to process and understand what we perceive.  One way, therefore, of creating an immersive experience is to create an environment where the body is free to move about and explore the environment without technological augmentation on the body. Another means is through a virtual world of human design that is created and viewed through use of technology.  In a fully immersive world such as this, the imagination of the artist/designer runs free and the resulting experience may or may not resemble any previously known human experience.  For further understanding of immersion, we must also examine the relationship between the real world and virtual world. 

A body-oriented view of immersion might view it in these four ways:

a) Immersion as a replacement of real world experience

b) Immersion as an overlay of virtual world onto real world experience

c) Immersion in a virtual world through an avatar

d) Immersion as integration of art experience and real world

Immersion as replacement of real world experience

One method of immersion owes itself to the technological ability to create realistic virtual worlds into which a viewer enters by donning some kind of technological device that suppresses the outer world and supplants it with a virtual experience. In this way, what the viewer perceives through sight, sound and touch are controlled by technology; the sense of physical space is replaced by a virtual world and while the viewer might be able to physically move about in small space, the space is not unlimited, and the experience is constrained by the extent of the designed experience.  What the viewer perceives is entirely of human design and is meant to replace a real-world experience.  Scott Fisher’s VIEW project (1986) incorporates head-mounted display, ear phones and a DataGlove to immerse the participant in the virtual experience.  While Fisher’s experimentation is described as an art/science approach to studying virtual experiences, the readings provide clarity on how the technology is used, but less about the nature of the experience.[4]

Immersion as overlay of virtual experience onto real world experience

Another type of immersive art is a hybrid of real world and virtual world.  The viewer enters a space that is augmented by technology, transposed with virtual elements, but the outer world is not suppressed and the viewer is sensing a combination of real world and virtual world.  In this type of environment, the viewer may or may not wear technological devices to enhance sensory experience, but the environment is understood to exist in the real world. 

Myron Kreuger’s GlowFlow and MetaPlay (1969-1970) are experimental collaborative performances.  In GlowFlow, Kreuger used technology to create dedicated environments in which participants interact with a technological interface embedded in the environment that reads and responds to them by changing the lighting. In MetaPlay, the performance aspect of the experiment was more fully realized.  In another dedicated environment, participants interact with an 8’ x 10’ image projected on the wall.  The image is a composite of computer-generated image made in real time by the artist (viewing the environment from another location) and an image of the participants in the space.  The performance aspect of the piece came through real-time interaction between the participants gesturing and viewing the wall, and the artist responding by drawing on the composited image.  Perhaps one of the reasons why these pieces are considered performance art and art experimentation rather than just technological experimentation is that the artist called them art and staged performances in art spaces.[5] 

Dan Graham’s Performer/Audience/Mirror is a different type of example of overlaying an art experience into the world of the participant, one where technology plays a very small part. The performance begins with a traditional layout of a stage and seating area with the artist and the viewers separated.  But, through discussion and reflection upon himself and then the audience, the artist brings himself and the audience into common ground conversationally.  He then turns to the mirror that reflects the audience and himself, visibly blending them together and redefines the space of the art piece to include himself, the audience and their reflections into one common ground.  Here again, the audience becomes immersed in the art experience and the art experience is co-existent with the real world experience of both the artist and the participants.[6]

Immersion in a virtual experience through an avatar

A common method of immersion may be understood using an MMOG as an example.  The viewer’s body stays in the real world, and the virtual world is presented to them on a computer screen.  They are represented in the virtual world by means of an avatar, who functions in the virtual world according to the rules of that world.  This environment is understood to exist in a virtual space, not real-world.  These environments largely have been constructed as entertainment or learning games.  Mudding may be considered an example of this kind of immersive experience, though the interaction is text-based rather than fully realized visual graphics.  Mudding presents an opportunity to integrate story – a personalized experience of scripted story – with a collaborative social experience.[7]

Immersion as integration of art experience and real world

Another more subtle and possibly loose definition of “immersion” is when an art experience has been enmeshed into the regular world of the viewer/participant.  As with a participatory happening, or certain performance pieces, the viewer is surrounded by, and immersed in the experience but it does not represent an “other” from their real world, in which they are fully present.  The viewer is not brought into an art experience, the art experience is brought to them.  One aspect of artistic experimentation has been the redefinition of when and where an art experience can occur. 

In Abramovic/Ulay’s Imponderabilia performance (1977), the participants had to pass between the nude bodies of the two artists in order to enter the museum.  So, technically, the act of passing over the threshold into the artistic space became an art experience.  Is this not an immersive experience?  The viewer/participant experienced art in the context of their own world.  With this piece, the artists successfully injected an art experience into the world/experience of the viewer/participant.[8]  

Technological Experimentation as Art Experimentation

The development of immersive virtual worlds would not exist without experimentation in how technology can alter perception.  Technology has been developed as a means of augmenting human capabilities, either mechanization that performs human tasks more easily or better than humans, or technology that performs tasks that humans can’t do, such as real-time communication over vast distances. But when new technology is used in the context of artistic experimentation, the results can be surprising.  Artistic experimentation is referenced here as exploration of deeper meanings, fuller understanding of artist, viewer, artifact, perception, conceptualization and experience. 

It can be argued that artists use technology as tools like any other, but that the sheer complexity and expense of technology makes it prohibitive for easy experimentation.  It is as much the exception and not the rule for an artist to assume technology as part of their skills as it is for the technologist or engineer to include artistic questions in their experimentation.  Artists have experimented with immersion in several ways – immersion as a participatory event where the viewer is actively participating in an art experience, immersion as a participatory event where the viewer/participant is actively collaborating to create the art event, immersion as a participatory event where the viewer/participant is having a sensory experience that is augmented by technology so that the external, “normal” world is subsumed and replaced by a technologically realized world.  This technologically realized world may take the form of a fictionalized version of our future, such as William Gibson has written of.  It could take the form of Myron Kruger’s composed “responsive environments” in which the artist orchestrated or composed imagery that was composed of and for the viewer/participant.  This work, preceded video conferencing as a service offering, but would video conferencing be as integrated as it is today without the free experimentation. 

Scott Fisher continued the tradition of artist/engineer by creating virtual environments and then studying how people interact with them.[9]  Components of a virtual environment include head mounted gear and gloves or other input devices through which the viewer can control their interaction with the environment.  The means by which participants control their interactions is constrained by technological capability and designer’s choice. 

Experimentation and development of technologically enhanced immersive environments may yet be in its infancy and will likely see robust development in two realms.  Through social networking, the real-world audience of “pro-sumers” is now accustomed to adopting new technology, and creating content and experiences with others.[10]  The technology of immersive experience is limited only by the bandwidth needed to support more robust visual experiences, and this is destined to be less of a limitation going forward.  In terms of experimentation, the term “Art/Science” is still considered a new term, but is gaining ground as an accepted practice in learning and research institutions.  Artists continue to embrace technology as a tool and subject matter. 

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[1]   Packer, R. and K. Jordan, Multimedia : from Wagner to virtual reality. 1st ed. 2001, New York: Norton. xxi, 394 p.  (pp. 3-9) 

[2]   Frieling, R. and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art., The art of participation : 1950 to now. 2008, New York: Thames & Hudson. 212 p. (pp. 39-43)

[3]   Frieling  (pp. 82 – 198)

[4]  Packer (pp. 237-246)

[5]  Packer (pp. 104-120)

[6]  Frieling (pp. 122-123)

[7]  Packer (pp. 317-334)

[8]  Frieling (pp. 112-115)

[9]  Packer (pp. 237-246)

[10] Frieling (pp. 66-79)