AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]: Announcements

Call for papers: Liberty on parole? Challenges in interactivity

2024-01-31T17:29:49+00:00

Edited by Pietro Montani and Andrea Pinotti

Deadline for full articles: July 15^th, 2024

In his influential essay The Inevitable (2016), Kevin Kelly holds interactivity among the major forces that will shape the near future. He maintains that “in the coming 30 years, anything that is not intensely interactive will be considered broken.” Touch screens, smart objects and domotics, interactive television series, or adaptive AI-generated video-games, just give us a hint of how our daily experience is going to be transformed.

The concept of interactivity has been investigated in several different fields, in the belief that it is key to the way we inhabit the world in a broad sense. Just to make some examples, one may think about Gibson’s theory of affordances (1979) and its developments; the model of the Extended Mind (Clark & Chalmers 1998) and the Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris 2013); or Enactivism, according to which our interactions with our environments, or other organisms, constitute the grounding and the primary expression of cognition itself (Thompson 2007, Gallagher 2020).

The advent of electronic media, though, has made the concept of interactivity even more pervasive. Indeed, since their first appearance, electronic media have been defined as “interactive”, in contrast to analogic apparatuses. The concept of interactivity aimed to describe both the ability of electronic interfaces to respond to a user’s input, and the way the user could interact with media and devices, choosing which path to follow, manipulating, or generating new content.

In the field of narratology, scholars have highlighted the advent of new forms of interactive storytelling (Murray 1997) and more recently of "Interactive Digital Narrative" (Koenitz, Ferri, Haahr, Sezen, & Sezen, 2015), concerning works by writers, artists and game designers. Compared to the traditional modes of interaction between the reader and the text – even when considered as non-passive (Eco 1979) – video games have been defined as "ergodic" texts, i.e. texts that require an effort from the reader/player (Aarseth 1997).

However, since any reception entails imaginative integrations and performative responses (Montani 2022), some scholars have claimed that interactivity is too broad a concept to account for the specificity of digital interfaces and should therefore be discarded (Manovich 2001).

Besides, the relation of reversibility and reciprocal feedback, brought about by electronic media and later by the implementation of artificial intelligence and linked to the concept of interface as well as of "interaction design", has pushed scholars in different fields to account for the agency of digital images (Hansen 2014), of technologies and media (Farocki 2004, Paglen 2014), and, more broadly, of non-human entities (Grusin 2015), as well as to reframe them in operational terms (Hoel 2018; Parikka 2023). A lot of attention has been paid to human-computer interaction, so as to develop user-friendly interfaces that give the illusion of no technical mediation (Weiser 1991). Today, digital technologies have become so ubiquitously present in our environment that they almost constitute the condition of possibility of our experience and interaction with the environment (Marras & Mecacci 2015).

Lastly, with the advent of Virtual and Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence, the notion of interactivity has conquered yet another field of application. In fact, several properties of VR-, AR- and AI-based environments may be explored by recurring to the notion of “interactivity”: in fact, such interactive environments offer extremely lifelike sensorimotor affordances; they involve the users in participatory creative processes, as happens in “virtual storytelling” (Dooley 2017, Bucher 2018); they include interactions with quasi-subjects known as “avatars” (Pinotti 2020), be they proxies of human subjects or AI-assisted characters; they pervasively spread in the domain of AI digital assistance (Pizzi, Scarpia & Pantano 2021), and in text-to-image and image-to-text models in AI-based programs like Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion (Somaini 2023); they characterise procedurally generated open world universes (as is the case of video games such as No Man’s Sky).

VR, AR and AI not only afford new types of interactions with the environment, but they also provide the possibility of an intersubjective interactivity in a shared virtual world that sometimes results in the creation of new collective subjects, with shared/common perception, intentionality and needs (Liberati 2016). Importantly, both these spheres of interactions are regulated by strictly technical conditions, which inescapably shape and reverberate on the users’ experience. In this regard, the argument of interactivity cuts both ways, inasmuch as virtual interfaces also come to limit and constrain the user’s freedom (Chandrasekera, Fernando, & Puig 2019); or the degree and type of manipulability of a given environment and the objects it contains. This perspective revives in the context of new digital technologies a classic theme of philosophical reflection: that of free will. To what extent does interactivity emancipate the user and redefines the roles both of producer and consumer? To what extent is interactivity outlined as yet another articulation of that inevitable observance of rules (Crary 1990) that marks by definition every relationship of the observer with the media with which he interacts? To what extent does the gained freedom remain a form of freedom conditioned by structural constraints, a liberty on parole?

The issue particularly encourages proposals concerning:

- Theoretical interpretations of interactivity;

- Interdisciplinary and/or multi-methodological approaches to interactivity;

- Interactivity in VR, AR, XR, AI;

- Interactivity in visual arts, cinema, tv series, video-games, and other digital media;

- Interactive storytelling;

- Theories of active spectatorship;

- Analysis of emblematic cases and innovative works leveraging on interactivity;

- Interaction with avatars and props in digital and virtual environments.

Call for papers: CLOSED - Transformational Experiences. The Role of Immersive Arts and Media in Individual and Societal Change

2023-07-01T16:29:04+00:00

Transformational Experiences. The Role of Immersive Arts and Media in Individual and Societal Change

Edited by Federica Cavaletti and Katrin Heimann

Extended Deadline for full articles: February 15th, 2024

Characters / word count: 24.000-30.000 characters (spaces included), or 3.500-5.000 words.

If motivated by the nature of the research, word count for manuscripts destined to this issue may be extended to a maximum of 10.000 words.

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We live in times of humanitarian and environmental crises. The effects of climate change add to the economic, physical, and mental suffering caused by social discrimination (e.g. gender, class, and race inequalities), while ultimately not only affecting those lowest in the power structure. These crises are unlikely to be resolved with technology alone – as post-work society and similar frameworks encourage to think. Rather, a better future for all relies on systemic changes with unknown consequences for each of our individual lives and society as a whole.

Such uncertainty and related fear of loss can create reactions of fragility, additionally contributing to the problems at hand: rather than building new teams across old borders, sharing resources to create new solutions to old problems, we tend to isolate and cling to what we know and have.

Encounters with and creation of arts have been suggested as a potential remedy, offering safe spaces that allow for staying with the trouble (Haraway 2016) rather than running from it, that facilitate creative imaginations of a different future rather than manifesting the past. Spaces of transformational learning. Spaces of care. Spaces of change.

In this issue of AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images, we welcome any contributions investigating the role of the arts and media in these processes, focussing on immersive experiences in particular. That is, we are concentrating on art forms and media products that envelop and surround the users, including – but not limited to – virtual reality.

In fact, though much has been written on the transformative potential of art and aesthetic experience (Barrett 2010; Kokkos 2010) as well as artistic creation (Blackburn 2020; Hoggan, Simpson, Stuckey 2009; Lawrence 2005) and finally art and science collaborations (Gabrys, Yusoff 2012) in the field of transformational pedagogy, the transformational impact of immersive media and arts specifically is still in need of dedicated exploration.

One may think first of all about presence, in its various conceptualizations (e.g. Lombard et al. 2015; Schubert et al. 2001) and in its components of place illusion and plausibility illusion (Slater et al. 2022). But medium-specific interactivity, multisensoriality, avatarization, and embodiment (Seinfeld et al. 2021; Kilteni et al. 2015; Spanlang et al. 2014; Biocca 2002) deserve primary attention as well.

This issue is open to any methodological approach and specifically invites interdisciplinary collaborations. We strongly encourage contributions blending theoretical reflection (inspired to aesthetics, critical theory, or other relevant frameworks), empirical research (quantitative as well as qualitative and experiential), and action research. We consider experimentation and observation as practices of interventive power rather than neutral forms of documentation and thus particularly welcome contributions that reflect on and problematize the relation between what is studied and the methodologies involved.

Contributions might relate to the following topics:

- What are valuable current examples of immersive experiences addressing humanitarian and environmental crises? What are their strengths and limitations in initiating individual and societal change?

- What is the context sensitivity and thus the role of facilitation/curating/disseminating practices in transformational processes involving immersive arts and media?

- What is the medium-specific contribution of immersive arts and media, compared to previous or contemporary forms of expression?

- What are the precise connections between presence/interactivity/multisensoriality/ avatarization/embodiment, and individual and societal change?

- How can the transformational impact of immersive arts and media be assessed? What methodologies are best suited to do so?

- What is the relationship between transformational experiences as they are described in theory, and the way they are subjectively lived in practice?

- How can empirical research complement theoretical understanding, and vice versa, when it comes to the specific issues at stake? How can interdisciplinary collaborations be structured in this specific field?

References

Barrett, T., “Aesthetics, Conversations, and Social Change,” in T. Costantino, B. White, eds., Essays on Aesthetic Education for the 21st Century (Leiden: Brill, 2010), https://doi.org/10.1163/9789460911224_010

Biocca, F., “The Evolution of Interactive Media: Toward ‘Being There’ in Nonlinear Narrative Worlds,” in M.C. Green, et al., eds., Narrative impact. Social and Cognitive Foundations (Mahwah-London: Psychology Press, 2002): 97-130.

Blackburn Miller, J., “Transformative Learning and the Arts: A Literature Review,” Journal of Transformative Education 18, no. 4 (2020): 338–355, https://doi.org/10.1177/1541344620932877

Hoggan, C., Simpson, S., Stuckey, H., Creative Expression in Transformative Learning: Tools and Techniques for Educators of Adults (Malabar: Krieger Publishing Company, 2009).

Gabrys, J., Yusoff, K., “Arts, Sciences and Climate Change: Practices and Politics at the Threshold,” Science as Culture 21, no. 1 (2012): 1-24, https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2010.550139

Haraway, D., Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham-London: Duke University Press, 2016).

Kilteni, K., et al., “Over My Fake Body: Body Ownership Illusions for Studying the Multisensory Basis of Own-Body Perception,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (2015): 141, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00141

Kokkos, A., “Transformative Learning Through Aesthetic Experience: Towards a Comprehensive Method,” Journal of Transformative Education 8, no. 3 (2010): 155-177, https://doi.org/10.1177/1541344610397663

Lawrence, R. L., “Knowledge Construction as Contested Terrain: Adult Learning through Artistic Expression,”, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 107 (2005): 3-11, https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.184

Lombard, M., Jones, M.T., “Defining Presence”, in M. Lombard, et al., eds., Immersed in Media. Telepresence Theory, Measurement & Technology (Cham: Springer, 2015): 13-34.

Schubert, T., et al., “The Experience of Presence: Factor Analytic Insights,” Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 10, no. 3 (2001): 266-281, https://doi.org/10.1162/105474601300343603

Seinfeld, S., et al., “User Representations in Human-Computer Interaction,” Human-Computer Interaction 36, no. 5-6 (2021): 400-438, https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2020.1724790

Slater, M., et al., “A Separate Reality: An Update on Place Illusion and Plausibility in Virtual Reality,” Frontiers in Virtual Reality 3 (2022): 81, https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2022.914392

Spanlang, B., et al., “How to Build an Embodiment Lab: Achieving Body Representation Illusions in Virtual Reality,” Frontiers in Robotics and AI 1 (2014): 9, https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2014.00009

Call for papers: CLOSED - Immersed in the work. From the environment to virtual reality

2022-12-28T16:25:12+00:00

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).

Conte, Unframing Aesthetics (Milano -Udine: Mimesis International, 2020).

Ferrari, A. Pinotti, eds., La cornice. Storie, teorie, testi, (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2018).

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

Filipovic, M. van Hal, S. Ovstebo, eds., The Biennial Reader, an anthology on large-scale perennial exhibitions of contemporary art (Ostfildernn: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010).

Freedberg, The power of images: studies in the history and theory of response (Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Freedberg, V. Gallese, “Motion, emotion and empathy in esthetic experience”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 3 (2007): 197-203.

Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (Cambridge - London: The MIT Press, 2003).

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

Groys, “Multiple Authorship” in B. Vanderlinden, E. Filipovic, eds. The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

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

Kabakov, M. Tupitsyn, V. Tupitsyn, “About Installation”, Art Journal, vol. 58, no. 4 (1999): 62-73.

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.

I. Sutherland, “The Ultimate Display”, in Proceedings of the IFIP Congress 65. Washington, vol. I (London: Spartan Books, 1965): 506-8.

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).

Call for papers: CLOSED - Just an illusion? Between simulation, emulation, and hyper-realism

2021-05-10T12:26:37+00:00

Edited by Pietro Conte and Lambert Wiesing

Deadline for full articles January 31st, 2022

Characters/word count: 24.000-30.000 characters (spaces included), or 3.500-5.000 words.

Download PDF

Recent years have witnessed increasing debate on the notion of illusion in the contemporary mediascape and on its role within digital environments, in particular with respect to virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies. Immersive environments can elicit in the user an intense feeling of being incorporated into quasi-real worlds. Consequently, and despite being traditionally given a negative value, the word “illusion” is more and more accorded a positive meaning as a key aspect of the phenomenon of immersion; as such, it is regarded as an important goal to be pursued by the creators of hyper-realistic and virtual environments.

However, the concept of illusion is in itself plagued by ambiguities and even contradictions, and therefore in need of clarification. Does it imply an unconscious deception accomplished through a false perception, or is it rather a lusory attitude adopted in a peculiar kind of make-believe relation? What is the difference between illusion, deception, and hallucination? How does illusion turn into deception? How does deception become illusion?

In simulated virtual environments, people experience a strong feeling of presence (place illusion) and react to what they perceive as if it were real (plausibility illusion) (Slater 2009; Hofer et al. 2020). At the same time, they remain perfectly aware that they are not “really” there, and that the events are not “actually” occurring. How is such conflict between knowing and perceiving to be explained, and is it to be regarded as a new form of aesthetic illusion (Koblížek 2017)?

Moreover, virtual reality has the power to make the users feel as if they own and control a body (body-ownership illusion) that can look very different from their biological one. This can result into a transformation of self-representation, which in turn may cause a change in our attitudes towards ourselves or towards other people, thus helping reduce implicit racial and gender bias or mitigate health problems and mental disorders (Peck et al. 2013; Scarpina et al. 2019). Yet, what are the limits of virtual reality and of the possibilities it offers to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, promoting virtuous and socially adaptive processes of emulation? How to debunk the rhetoric (which has an ethic, social, and political meaning) behind the celebration of virtual reality as “the ultimate empathy machine” (Milk 2015)?

Furthermore, “environmental” images often imply a variable degree of interaction with the observers; but is interactivity necessary to elicit illusion? Does the multisensory quality of the interaction affect the overall illusion effect? Given that immersive virtual environments are frequently inhabited by the users’ proxies, do avatars in their vast phenomenology enhance or rather diminish the degree of illusion? What is the relation between illusion and the “style” of the image? More specifically, is hyper-realism a necessary element of illusion or, as Gordon Calleja (2011) maintains, only one viable alternative among many others? What about the so-called “immersive fallacy” and the idea that, when plunged into digital environments, the user’s mind accepts what it perceives as reality (Salen & Zimmerman 2003)?

In line with the research directions listed above, and instead of focussing on more traditional topics like optical illusions, this issue encourages contributions specifically addressing the following topics:

The relation between traditional and contemporary accounts of illusion;
The distinction between illusion, deception, and hallucination;
Illusion in the arts and media: painting, sculpture, theatre, cinema and pre-cinematicdevices (panoramas, phantasmagorias, cinerama, circarama, totalrama…), videogames and other digital media;
The notion of illusion as related to virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies;
The different kinds of illusion (place illusion, plausibility illusion, body illusion) in immersive virtual environments;
The role of illusion in generating an immersive effect and, vice versa, the role of immersion in producing illusion;
Strategies to elicit (full) body ownership illusion within virtual environments;
How illusion transforms our bodily-self, and how this reverberates on the possibility of overcoming social, racial, and gender biases;
The role of (real-time) interaction and sensory-motor synchrony in immersive environments;
The relevance of the classical concepts of Edmund Husserl’s contradiction (Widerstreit) and Richard Wollheim’s twofoldness in the very specific research field of virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies.

References

Calleja, G.,In-Game. From immersion to incorporation (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2011).
Hofer M., Hartmann T., Eden A.,Ratan R. & Hahn L., “The role of plausibility in the experience of spatial presence in virtual environments,” Front. Virtual Real. 1:2 (2020). doi: 10.3389/frvir.2020.00002
Koblížek T. (ed.), The aesthetic illusion in literature and the arts (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
Milk, Chris, “How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine,” TED Talk (2015).
Peck T.C., Seinfeld S.,Aglioti S.M. & Slater M., “Putting yourself in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias,” Conscious Cogn. 22:3 (2013):779-87. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.04.016. Epub 2013 May 28. PMID: 23727712.
Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E., Rules of play: Game design fundamentals (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2003).
Scarpina F., Serino S., Keizer A., Chirico A., Scacchi M., Castelnuovo G., Mauro A. & Riva G., “The effect of a virtual-reality full-body illusion on body representation in obesity,” J Clin Med. 8:9 (2019), 1330. doi: 10.3390/jcm8091330
Slater, M., “Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments,”PhilosTrans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 364:1535 (2009): 3549-3557.