Diving in… and Resurfacing
“Immersion can be an intellectually stimulating process; however, in the present as in the past, in most cases immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another. It is characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement in what is happening.”1 1 - Oliver Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, trad. Gloria Custance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 13.
The critical distance evoked by media theorist Oliver Grau is what enables a certain degree of objectivity in the reception or analysis of art. While we might welcome the heightened emotional involvement generated by immersion in art, the rapid development of an industry of immersive exhibitions, even in museums, raises concerns about the pervasive influence of entertainment culture. Will we soon experience art solely through virtual or augmented reality?
