CFP: Immersion and expanded spectatorships (deadline: 15 July 2022)

Immersion is a long-sought experience and a deep-seated desire in image worlds. Produced by still or moving images and engaging both static and mobile spectators, immersion is often described as a ‘sense of being there’, a ‘flow state’ or an ‘experience of a nonmediated space’. Recurrent synonyms such as ‘involvement’, ‘participation’, ‘transportation’ and ‘absorption’ have been used to outline this embodied mode of spectatorship and distinguish it from 2D or flat traditional media. Presence and sensory immersion are an enduring media craze with ups and downs over the last two centuries, requiring a more critical understanding of its cultural imagination and technological uptakes.

While immersive modes of spectatorship have been crucial to modern experiences in planetariums, museums, panoramas, cosmoramas, peepshows, magic lantern lectures and cinemas, the currently widespread availability of Virtual Reality technology and 360º interactive moving images both resumes and reshapes earlier expectations viewers had in watching pictures. This high-tech renewed sensual state of involvement is now dependent on photorealistic 3D graphics and real-time rendering and interaction with virtual objects. The new immersion specs rely on a much more dynamic and haptic interaction with narratives. Today, immersion has become a key and stable feature in the gaming industry, one of the most innovative sectors in technology. Expressions such as “immersive natives” (Steinicke 2016) reveal a new generation of fluent explorers of virtual environments, no longer constrained by physical reality and used to seeing images as “worlds and environments, places and spaces that need portals and escape hatches and are driven by problem-solving and viewer/ participant control over characters and their stories” (Burnett 2013: 201). On the other hand, the need for more realistic and immersive environments grew in importance as our daily life experiences (from work and communication to shopping and entertainment) are being transferred to virtual worlds, which are training us with new stimuli and perceptual challenges.

This special section, “Immersion and expanded spectatorships” of Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image, will reflect on how the current hype surrounding the concept of ‘immersion’ might influence the future of cinema and any other media relying on virtual environments. It will examine how experiences of immersion have differently impacted and intersected the art world and its institutions. It also plans to rethink immersion in its long media history, combining cultural studies, media archaeology and art theory with VR and psychology studies. We, therefore, welcome paper submissions focused on the following themes or related topics:

- Presence and sensory immersion: an enduring media craze;

- Static and moving Panoramas: two immersive paradigms; 

- Peepshows and Cosmoramas: Imaginative dislocation and virtual travel;

- ‘Total image’ utopias and other immersive myths;

- Cinematic immersion: From magic lantern shows to 360º interactive moving images;

- Virtual Reality films and storytelling;

- 3D Immersion: From stereoscopic photography to 3D cinema and 3D animation graphics;

- Mixed Reality environments: Current challenges to perception;

- Museums and immersion: Institutional and artistic responses; 

- The future of VR pedagogy: Immersive tools for education and preservation

This special section is guest-edited by Victor Flores (CICANT, Lusófona University, Portugal), Susana S. Martins (IHA, NOVA-FCSH, Portugal), John Plunkett (Exeter University, United Kingdom).

Victor Flores is a senior researcher at CICANT – Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies, where he runs the Early Visual Media Lab. With a PhD in Sciences of Communication from Nova University of Lisbon, he is Associate Professor and Head of the PhD Program in Media Arts at Lusófona University, in Lisbon. He is the founding organizer of the International Conference on Stereo & Immersive Media: Photography, Sound and Cinema Research, and the principal editor of the corresponding International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media.

Susana S. Martins is senior researcher at the IHA – Institute of Art History, FCSH, Nova University of Lisbon, where she currently heads the Museum Studies research group. With a doctorate in photography and cultural studies from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Belgium, she has been mainly working on visual culture studies, namely on the intersection of photography, exhibitions, and print cultures. Presently, she teaches and coordinates a course on Photography and Visual Arts at NOVA-FCSH.

John Plunkett is associate Professor of English at the University of Exeter. Specialized in Victorian Studies, his research interests include nineteenth-century media culture, with a particular focus on the popular visual shows that so fascinated audiences during that period. He has published widely on these topics and is also interested in the way that new communications and technologies during the Victorian years have links with contemporary culture and digital media.

The deadline for submitting original and complete articles is 15 July 2022.

All submissions received within the deadline will undergo a selection process (by the editors), followed by blind peer review (by external reviewers). The texts should not be longer than 7000 words, and must include, in English and Portuguese: a title, an abstract of up to 300 words and a maximum of 6 keywords.

Before submitting your complete article, please read the full instructions here.

For any queries, please contact: aniki@aim.org.pt

References:

Burnett, Ron. 2013. “Transitions, Images, and Stereoscopic Cinema”. Public 47: 3D Cinema and Beyond 24 (47).  

Steinicke, Frank. 2016. Being Really Virtual. Immersive Natives and the Future of Virtual Reality. Cham: Springer.