The Immersive Experience
From the prehistory of audiovisual immersion to the "experience" nonsense
Just as we can talk about the prehistory of cinema—the technologies that shaped the origins of the cinematograph—we can talk about the prehistory of audiovisual immersion. But how do we decide which date marks the end of prehistory and the beginning of history?
Perhaps, to maintain the parallelism with cinema, the chosen date could be January 1896, the first public screening of L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat. In the eyes of a modern viewer, the Lumière brothers’ film is just a silent film in which we watch a train arriving at a station, but the spectators of that time, unfamiliar with cinema, screamed and fled in terror thinking that the train was heading directly towards them.
We do not know if that story is true, but even if it is a myth, it is a funny anecdote about how immersion and realistic representation leave their mark on the viewers.
If we go back to the real beginning, we should start talking about the Palaeolithic period. There are archaeological studies which claim that cave paintings took into account the curves of the stone and the flickering light of torches to create a sense of depth and movement, and the acoustic properties of the environment to create a fully immersive experience.
Later, in Ancient Rome, the houses of rich men were usually decorated with frescos, and some of the most spectacular ones are those which respond to immersive intentions. A good example would be the decoration of one of the rooms of Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, designed as a virtual garden. The realism and variety of species were underlined by the fact that it was impossible to compare the painting with the actual landscape because it was a subterranean chamber with no windows—the light entered through a small opening below the ceiling.
This type of interior design was used for many centuries in palaces and houses of noblemen and the bourgeoisie. Unlike the best-known trompe l'oeil—which works within a defined frame—the main goal of these immersive frescos was to create a 360º virtual space.
After the 15th century, this trend took a step further with the addition of three-dimensional elements emerging from the surface of the painting, a technique later known as faux terrain. A good example is the sanctuary of Sacro Monte di Varallo, a church with frescos and wooden figures that recreate scenes from the Bible.
In the 18th century, these techniques reached into non-sacred public spaces, especially in the form of panoramas framed within the entertainment industry. Panoramas are 360º images which offer a complete visual immersion. These paintings were originally designed for military research and planning—like almost everything in the history of media—but over time they became more sophisticated and started including sound and light effects, wind, and artificial smoke.
In the 19th century, panoramas were so successful that circular buildings were built to house them, and they toured throughout Europe for years, until the fabric was bleached and torn. There were even shops that sold wallpaper with panoramic scenes in case you wanted one for your own house. The middle class version of the fresco.
The first 3D visualization techniques emerged also in the 19th century. In 1832, the English physicist Charles Wheatstone described the scientific basis for stereography, a technique for creating an illusion of depth using two slightly different still images. Wheatstone made the first tests using drawings. The device to see those images, the stereoscope, was so popular that 20 years later more than half a million had already been sold.
You may have noticed that most of these examples are more related to decoration and entertainment than art. Even today, virtual spaces and 3D are exploited mainly within the entertainment industry, perhaps due to the high cost involved, but sometimes it is difficult to know where is the boundary between entertainment and art.
A strange development of the last few years lies precisely in that boundary. The Gustav Klimt Immersive Experience, The Claude Monet Immersive Experience, The Van Gogh Immersive Experience…
Every time that I hear that there is a new digital art exhibition near me I get excited, and then the exhibition is always some kind of immersive bullshit for tourists. Klimt, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. were great painters, yes, but those immersive “exhibitions” are not about art.
I have read that the reason for this new trend is that the younger generations value more experiences than material goods, but I do not think that is the cause. Millennials do not hang out in Monet immersive experiences, stop blaming everything on millennials, please. I suspect the real reasons have more to do with creating something flashy for social media, selfies, and clickbait.
On the other side, we have the contemporary artists who have worked or are working with immersive environments: James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, Ann Veronica Janssens, Ryoji Ikeda, etc. There are many, some of them well-known, but immersive nonsense about famous paintings attracts more headlines than art.
When it comes down to it, the general public goes where they are told to go. I do not want to sound paternalistic, but if you are not particularly interested in art you are only going to find out about what you see all the time on Instagram, Facebook or the TV. It happens to me with sports, for example. My interest in sports is zero, so I only know about what I see by chance, and I only remember what is really eye-catching and I see it on 20 different sites 100 times a day.
Maybe there is one important difference, I will never go to that flashy sports event, and nobody will call me an ignorant or uneducated because of that. Art has a more intellectual aura and often people who do not particularly care about it, or are just a bit curious, are pushed to go to see something, anything… and they will go to that absurd oil painting experience about that famous classic painter instead of to an art exhibition of someone that they have never heard about.
At the end of the day, immersion is like any other tool, it only makes sense if it offers something that goes beyond the technological gimmick.
A couple of films: Abstraction and psychogeography
Cinq minutes de cinéma pur is an experimental short film shot by Henri Chomette in 1925 and released in 1926. Cinéma pur is a term that describes the style of several French filmmakers from the 20s whose work was non-narrative.
The other film suggestion for this week is Cycling the Frame by Cynthia Beatt, a great short psychogeographic documentary in which Tilda Swinton follows the Berlin Wall on a bicycle. I watched it on Mubi, but you can find it on other websites.
If you want to say something, feel free to write a comment. I am also on Twitter. If you are curious about my own art, you can watch some of my films on my website and listen to my noise on Bandcamp.
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Have a nice week!