Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion

Art and science are once more allied in the service of today's most complex methods of producing images.pg 4

The panorama demands special consideration for two reasons: first, this illusion space represented the highest developed form of illusionism and suggestive power of the problematic variety that used traditional methods of painting. The panorama is also exemplary in that this effect was an intended one, a recalculated outcome of the application of technological, physiological, and psychological knowledge. With the contemporary means at hand, the illusion space addressed the observer as directly as possible; this latter was "implicit." Second, the study of the panorama can help to lay the foundations of the systematic comparison, where the metamorphosis of image and art associated with computer-aaided virtual reality emerges in a clearer light. pg 6

Immersion is undoubtedly key to any understanding of the development of the media, [is it really though? This is a very subjective and bold claim.] even though the concept appears somewhat opaque and contradictory. [this is ridiculous, you haven't even explained your take on the concept, and now your making me feel thick as shit for not understanding your bias point of view, the author the proceeds to start the next sentence with obviously, no no it's really not obvious shush now.]

The author then goes on to discuss virtual realities and immersive art space and then says this:

This is a great difference from the non hermetic effects of illusionistic painting such as Trompe L'Oeil, where the medium is readily recognisable, and from images or image spaces that are delimited by a frame that is apparent to the observer, such as theatre or, to a certain extent, the diorama, and particularly television. In their delineated form these image media stage symbolically the aspect of difference. They leave the observer outside and are thus unsuitable for communicating virtual realities in a way that overwhelmed the sense. For this reason, they do not form part of this study.

OKAY that's it I've had it with you author, and your delineated way of thinking, I'm sorry but how does a Trompe L'oeil not communicate a virtual reality in the street in street art? Is in not the same as going to a strip club paying a shit load of money to have a woman to look at but it doesn't overwhelm the senses because they aren't hookers so basically you're purely sticking to the hookers of illusion. Great one.

So I decided at this point I couldn't be bothered reading this book thoroughly because Oliver Grau was winding me up, so I went to the index to find he only talks about films over a span of ten pages, pretty sure I could manage that, but then right at the end I noticed the word Trompe L'Oeil again, so he does look at it even though he says he doesn't crazy person.

The section on films starts with the 360degree panorama machine created in the 1800's, an illusion obviously cast to the immersion of the cinema room, I quite like this quote he's referenced:

"Cinema as an environment for the enjoyment of art, for immersion in traumatic experiences, for films constructed in deliberate opposition to the experiences of those who pay to enter the dark womb and be at the mercy of the play of light and sounds." pg 92
Zielinski, Siegfried. 1999. Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press pg 152

Cinema is intended for direct sense and emotional perception, and this inevitably gives the director "power" over the feelings of the audience, even leading some filmmakers into the aberrant self-deception of being a demiugre. For Tarkovsky, these highly sensitive and suggestive components of film, allows us to interpret and comprehend the recurrent forays attesting to film's polysensory aims. Their basic trend is toward extending the system of illusion beyond the visual to include the other senses. Essentially a reproductive and psychological art form, the medium of film has seen many projection in order to intensify its suggestive effect on the audience. pg 153

He then goes on to discuss the development of 3D films and surround sound - obviously not in these simple terms and how cinema immersion improves, and the development of IMAX's.

Although not completely useful I think now after reading this that maybe the paragraph I string together from Frank Rose and Oliver Grau might form part of the conclusion rather than a chapter.

Conclusion:

Immersion arises when artwork and technologically advanced apparatus, message and medium, are perceived to merge inseparably. In this moment of calculate "totalisation," the artwork is extinguished as autonomously perceived aesthetic object for a limited period of time. The conscious illusion, as in the weaker form of trompe l'oeil, can shift right around for a few moments into unconscious illusion. The examples discussed here demonstrate that a constant characteristic of the principle of immersion is to conceal the appearance of the actual illusion medium by keeping it beneath the perceptive threshold of the observer to maximise the intensity of the messages that are being conveyed. The medium became invisible. pg 340

Illusion media may follow a genealogy, but they are not carried over one to one into new media. An illusion medium is composed of a number of factors; for example, film components include image definition, movement in real time, colour, sound and so on. New factors added to these which represent a significant advance in proximity to the familiar environment, for example, communication with agents or interaction in the case of the virtual reality, can for a period of time predominate vis à vis th other factors, which may even be less developed in comparison with the precursor medium (in virtual reality, for example, image definition and brilliance of colour) and, in the sort term, reduce decisively the observers' power to distance themselves from the image. Theoretically, this may offer an explanation for the shock effect of the Lumières' approaching train: The lower illusionary quality of other factors was thrust into the background by the new factor of movement. pg 342 -- 

This might be a good quote but it's a bit too flowery for me, I want this dissertation to be understandable, clear as day what I'm getting at, I don't have time for stuff written like this, it's too difficult to get your head round, I don't want to challenge people's vocab I'm more interested understanding the visual aspect of the work.

In summary, one can say that artistic visions reflect a continuing search for illusion using the technological most advanced medium at hand. Without exception, the image fantasies of oneness, of symbiosis, allied to media where the beginnings exist but are not yet realised, are still utopian. This was the case with Prampolini and it was no different with Eisenstein, Sutherland, Heilig, Youngblood, or Krueger. Moreover, it is apparent that new media, in their aesthetic content, always draw from their precursors, a perennial constituent. Today, not only are various audiovisual media, computer, home electronics, and telecommunication converging to form a polysensory and virtual hypermedium, but the expectations placed in this new medium of illusion appear to be more highly developed than ever before. A consequence of the constitutive function of artistic-illusionary utopias for the inception of new media of illusion is that the media are both a part of the history of culture and of technology. Thus, it is only logical that art is now making its way into the centres of high tech research, even though the necessary technology is military n origin and has been developed for commercially profitable spectacles. Media archaeology has excavated a wealth of experiments and designs, which failed to become established but nevertheless left their mark on the development of art media. That which was realised, or has survived, represents but a tiny fraction of the imaginings that all tell us something, often something unsettling, about the utopian dreams of people. pg 351.

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