Radical Immersions: Navigating between virtual/physical environments and information bubbles
Over the past years, immersive technologies have been hyped as consumer gadgets, entertainment media and the future of exhibition practices. The free distribution of VR headsets with smartphones and the increasing interest of museums, festivals and other cultural organisers towards ‘immersive digital content’ have quickly turned VR and AR devices and applications into widely recognized cultural artefacts. The promotion of ‘full immersion’ in the physical spaces of exhibitions and museums has led to some venues relying solely on interactive projections and audience interaction. However, just like many earlier ‘new media’ before them, the hyperbolic promises attached to these technologies’ supposed capacity to deliver immediacy and trigger a paradigm shift in media culture have thus far hardly become reality.
We are inviting papers and poster presentations that address questions including, but are not limited to, the following:
- How are the promises and expectations of VR, AR and other immersive consumer technologies embedded in broader cultural ideologies of progress and innovation?
- What are the tensions created between immersive technologies and physical environments?
- How is the space between an all-digital artwork and an all-physical exhibition space negotiated?
- How do the material aspects of immersive technologies’ hardware affect the generation and perception of immersive content?
- How might the design, marketing and use of digital platforms determine the ways in which online information communities are formed?
- To what extent might online ‘filter bubbles’ and other immersive information environments bear parallels to post-structuralist understandings of rhizomatic and fluid meaning-making in text?