Immersed in the work. From the environment to virtual reality 

 

(2/I issue) 

 

edited by Roberto P. Malaspina, Elisabetta Modena e Sofia Pirandello 

 

deadline: 31/1/2023 

 

In recent years we have witnessed a growing fashion which requires every experience to be “immersive”. This is, at least, what is suggested by the rhetoric of communication and marketing, promising immersions of various kinds, but with a common denominator which goes beyond a generic idea of attention as absorption (Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler 2013): That of feeling physically enveloped and engaged interactively in a multisensory environment (Griffiths 2013; Liptay and Dogramaci 2016). Hence, we talk about immersive environments, immersive cinema and video, immersive exhibitions and installations and so on. Even though the term “immersion” has been used with some regularity only since the 1990s in reference to technologies such as virtual reality -  – which at that time was being experimented for the first time outside the laboratories where it was developed in the late 1960s (Sutherland 1965;1968) - – some researchers have attempted to reconstruct a possible genealogy of immersive environments well before this date.  

Like an underground river, the immersive aesthetic experience would resurface in different periods, starting with cave paintings in the Paleolithic era and moving through to Pompeian frescos and trompe-l'œil, passing then from Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting to multimedia installations (Nechvatal 2009). A decisive moment for the design of these environments has been traced back to the 19th century, with particular reference to the 19th-century fashion of the ὅραμα (from the ancient Greek "view"), which saw the spread of devices such as the panorama, the diorama, the cosmorama, etc. (Grau 2003; Bordini 2006), as part of a wider “emotional geography” (Bruno 2000). 

However, one of the most significant moments in this history which has still not been sufficiently investigated in the debate (Modena 2021), is that of the installations and environments which arose in the first decades of the 20th century in the works of avant-garde artists of that time.  

In 1976 Germano Celant curated the exhibition Ambiente/Arte. Dal Futurismo alla Body Art, set up at the invitation of Vittorio Gregotti in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini for the 37th Venice Biennial. Here, as well as in the catalogue, the history of environments was reconstructed, starting from the beginning of the 20th century, when avant-garde artists began to create "wall boxes on a human scale" (Celant 1977, p. 6). These environments allowed the visitor to make a bodily entry into the work, going beyond the frame (Celant 1981; Ferrari and Pinotti 2018; Conte 2020) which contained the iconic space in the forms of the niche, door and window (Stoichita 1993), and the closed form of the sculpture that opened up into space and became environment. Since then, artists have increasingly favoured the construction of installations (Bishop 2005) and works aimed at producing enveloping, participatory and interactive physical experiences (Kabakov, Tupitsyn 1999; Reiss 2000; Bishop 2005; Groys 2009; Zuliani 2015), also making use of new technologies including virtual, augmented and mixed reality. The exhibition itself as an immersive device plays a significant role throughout the 20th century (consider the exhibitions of the Surrealists), so much so that the boundaries between artwork and exhibition become increasingly blurred in the contemporary tendency to set up large-scale installations, particularly in regularly staged international exhibitions, from the Venice Biennial to the Kassel documenta (Filipovic, van Hal, Ovstebo 2010). A chapter of this history also explicitly concerns the history of exhibition design and the relationship between design, architecture and the arts (Celant 2004).    

The physical presence of the visitor in the multi-sensory space of the work (Bishop 2005; Griffiths 2013; Liptay and Dogramaci 2016), as well as their role as an activator and experiencer are at the heart of any discussion of immersive contemporary art. Right from its very beginnings, Performance Art has been questioning the passive nature of the experience of the work, developing immersive dynamics in the space/scene in which the artist moves and involving the spectator in a dialogue which questions their role and the concept of spectatorship in general (Bourriaud 2001; Bishop 2012). More recently, the debate has focused on the empathic response to visual artworks (Freedberg 1989; Freedberg and Gallese 2007). 

Presenting itself at the same time as a space both exclusive (i.e. separated from the rest of the world) and inclusive (as it draws the visitor inside itself), the installation lends itself to forms of narration and storytelling (Bal 1999, 2000; Combrink & Allen 2019): Within the environment (analogue, digital or mixed), the artist sometimes leaves only clues or hints of stories; at other times they builds proper scripts based on real or plausible events or linked to fictional characters – just consider the growing role of science fiction in the building of utopian or dystopian narratives (Byrne-Smith 2020). 

At the centre of this critical reflection is also found the debate on the best way to preserve and respect the authenticity of complex installations considering carefully their time and site specificity (Ferriani and Pugliese 2009). 

Finally, the latest generation of immersive technologies and theories on the environmentalisation of the image (Pinotti 2021) suggest that we rethink Boris Groys’ claim concerning the possibility of interpreting installation as image and image as installation (Groys 2005; Modena 2021), thus confronting art history and theory with visual studies.  

 

The following is a non-exhaustive list of topics of interest to the issue regarding the concept of immersiveness:  

 

-the environmental installation and its history;  

-video art and multimedia installations;  

-Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art;  

-dialogues between architecture, design and art;  

-hyperrealistic and illusionistic art;  

-digital art, new media art, post-internet art;  

-art in virtual and augmented reality;  

-forms of immersiveness in the context of global art; 

-reenactment;  

-immersive works of a narrative nature. 

-the history of immersive exhibitions;  

-the history of staging;  

-the fashion of “experience” exhibitions;  

-designing the experience of visiting immersive art exhibitions. 

 

References 

Allen, L. Combrink, “Character (and absence) as a narrative key in installation art”, Literator, vol 40(1), (2019): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit. v40i1.1449

Armleder et. al., eds., Voids: a retrospective (Zürich: JRP-Ringier, 2009).

Bal, “Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ Spider as theoretical object”, Oxford Art Journal 22-2 (1999): 103–126. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/22.2.101

Bal, Louise Bourgeois’ Spider: The architecture of art-writing (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001).

Bishop, Installation Art. A Critical History (London: Tate Publishing, 2005).

Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London – New York: Verso, 2012).

Byrne-Smith, ed., Documents of Contemporary Art: Science Fiction (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2020).

Bordini, Storia del Panorama (Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2006).

Bruno, Atlas of Emotions. Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso, 2000).

Bruno, Atmospheres of Projection. Environmentality in Art and Screen Media (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle (Dijon: Les Presses du réeel, 2001).

Celant, ed., Ambiente/Arte. Dal Futurismo alla Body Art. Biennale Arte 1976 (Venezia: La Biennale, 1977).

Celant, “La cornice: dal simbolismo alla land art”, in G. Celant, ed. Il limite svelato. Artista, cornice, pubblico (Milano: Electa, 1981).

Celant, “Una macchina visuale. L’allestimento d’arte e i suoi archetipi moderni”, Rassegna (Allestimenti / Exhibit design), no. 10 (1982): 6-11.

Celant, ed., Arti e architettura: scultura, pittura, fotografia, design, cinema, architettura (Milano: Skira, 2004).

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Ferriani, M. Pugliese, Monumenti Effimeri. Storia e conservazione delle installazioni (Milano: Electa, 2009). 

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Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Spine. Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

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Groys, “Politics of Installation” in E-flux journal reader 2009 (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009). 

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Liptay, B. Dogramaci, eds., Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media (Leiden–Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016).

Modena, “Immersi nell’irreale. Prospettive an-iconiche sull’arte contemporanea dall’ambiente alla realtà virtuale”, Carte semiotiche. Rivista internazionale di semiotica e teoria dell’immagine, L. Corrain, M. Vannoni (eds.), Annali 7, Figure dell’immersività (2021): 71-78. 

Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals/Critical Distances. A Study of the Affinity between Artistic Ideologies Based in Virtual Reality and Previous Immersive Idioms (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009).

O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)

Pinotti, Alla soglia dell’immagine. Da Narciso alla realtà virtuale (Torino: Einaudi, 2021).

Reiss, From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).  

I. Stoichita, (1993), “Marges”, in L’Instauration du tableau. Métapeinture a l’aube des temps modernes (Geneve: Droz, 1999): 53-99.

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Sutherland, “A head-mounted three-dimensional display”, in AFIPS Conference Proceeding, vol. XXXIII (1968): 757-64.

Tedeschi, Luoghi di transizione. Forme e immagini di “passaggio” fra arte e architettura (Brescia: Scholé, 2020).

Wolf, W. Bernhart, A. Mahler, eds., Immersion and Distance. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media (Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi, 2013).

Zuliani, Senza cornice. Spazi e tempi dell'installazione (Roma: Arshake, 2015).