With technology’s improvements, artists and designers were able to create immersive environments where people were able to experience new situations and senses without seeing through VR masks,  but by becoming part of installations. Indeed, viewers are physically teleported into new worlds where the interaction is physical. Team Lab’s “Floating Flower Garden” and Random International’s “Rain Room”, are a recreation of natural phenomenons that seem real in an indoor environment.

In “Floating Flower Garden”, living flowers float up and down in relation to the movement of people in the space. Whenever a viewer approaches the flower-filled space, the flowers near the viewer rise upward all at once.

The interactive installation is controlled by sensors, cameras, and computers. These technological devices react with precision to the number of viewers and their movements. In fact, if viewers get close to one another, the flowers link up to form one single space. Therefore, a visitor acts as a flower and becomes part of the 2,300 floating flowers landscape himself. As Kudo mentioned, this phenomenon happens once the flower catches the viewer staring.

“We love for people to be inside the artwork and have that experience. We got the idea from Zen—you see the flowers, but at the same time, the flowers are seeing you. The garden is seeing you. In the digital world, there is no border between space and object.”- Kudo from Team Lab.

 

The “Rain Room” installation is a one hundred square meter space of pouring rainfalls at the rate of 260 gallons per minute. Its walls are made of matte black fabric and the floor is assembled with metallic grids through which the falling water drains. A set of technological devices, including hidden 3D cameras and motorized mirrors, operate in order to simulate realistic sounds, humidity, and rainfall.

Viewers of the exhibition walk through the immersive space without getting wet. In fact, when a human body is detected by the technologies, the rain gets paused. Ultimately, the viewer becomes part of the artwork as the installation reacts to its behavior and transforms itself accordingly. Again, the rain is watching the viewer while the viewer is watching the rain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkvazIZx-F0

 

Finally, it is interesting to mention the experience of control in both immersive environments. Indeed, “Rain Room” offers the experience of controlling the rain while “Flower Floating Garden” allow the control of the blooming of the flowers. However, these capacities of control are inevitable, as the visitors are immersed in an enveloped space where there are no other possibilities of experience.

 

 

from the Greek pan (all) and horama (view)

 

Robert Barker is an 18th century Irish painter and entrepreneur who invented panorama. He spent his whole life making panoramic paintings. His goal was to make “the observers(…) feel as if they are on the very spot.”

His lifetime inventions included his own purpose built building in 1795 for displaying panoramas in the Leicester Square, in London, UK. The rotunda had two viewing chambers: one large circle at the bottom made for the display of 10,000 square feet panoramas, and a smaller one right above, made for the display of 2,700 square feet panorama. Each circles carried a raised platform at its center for spectators to watch the landscapes. A conical roof almost completely made of glass, supported by a metal framework, was designed to provide natural light to both panorama viewing chambers below.

This mechanical building was conceived in a very mathematical and precise way. Indeed,  heights, angles, and distances were carefully calculated in order to provide the most three-dimensional illusion.

Many people felt disoriented after visiting the building. They were astonished by the powerful immersive illusion.

 

 

 

 

 

Artists and journalists have long time tried to find striking manners of denouncing problematic occurrences to the world. Nonny De La Peña, an American journalist, is widely credited with helping create the genre of immersive journalism. It is a wide medium that focuses on the viewer’s experiences of the events and situations described in documentaries and news reports, through the act of “stepping into the story”. As she stated, this form of journalism can

“take away the filter of the journalist and let people become witnesses of their own stories.”

De la Peña makes good use of emerging technologies. Indeed, she uses immersive virtual, mixed, and augmented realities in order to create sensitive experiences. These tools allow her to create sensational experiences to the mind undeniably, but most importantly to the body. She said:

“Right now, you’re experiencing the world with your entire body and not just your mind, and that sensation is really what gives people a connexion, a sensitive empathy.”

In her project entitled “Hunger in Los Angeles” (2012), Nonny De la Peña tried to make the invisible visible. In fact, she believes that hungry people in L.A are invisible and need to be taken more seriously. The piece is the recreation of a real incident at a food bank outside the First Unitarian Church in Downtown Los Angeles. It is the story of a diabetic man who waited in line for too long. As a result, his sugar blood level dropped too low, and he collapsed. An ambulance was called.                                                                       In the VR, De La Peña used real audio of the event, making the experience even more powerful. Indeed, people’s reactions to the scene were very empathetic and emotional. Some of them were trying to talk to the seizure victim, while others were trying to touch him and help him. They were often in tears when removing their goggles after watching it.

 

In a nutshell, immersive technologies have the power to control people’s experiences. As seen in De La Peña’s projects, people can leave their everyday reality in order to subjectively discover and feel a new one.

The artist’s website. 

 

Stereo- solid body

Skopion- to see

 

In 1838, Charles Wheatstone invented one of the earliest stereoscope in history that expanded the world’s knowledge about binocular vision, and therefore the illusionary perception of depth. In the process of invention, Wheatstone questioned the following:” What would be the visual effect of simultaneously presenting to each eye, instead of the object itself, its projection on a plane surface as it appears to that eye?…”

 

The Wheatstone Stereoscope consists of a pair of mirrors in the center, at 45 degree angles to the user’s eyes, and two slightly dissimilar pictures placed face to face at both extremities. 12 pairs of geometrical figures were designed based on how each eye would individually see one specific geometrical figure.

 

 

Each mirror located at the eye level of the viewer reflects one picture. Hence, each picture is stimulating its designated eye. As a result, the brain fuses the two dissimilar images together, and accept them as a view of one solid three-dimensional geometrical object. This leads to depth perception.

 

 

Finally, throughout this experimentation, Charles Wheatstone demonstrates how the human perception of an image isn’t instantaneous. In fact, our organisms have the ability to synthesize a pair of dissimilar images into one 3D image. Nowadays, this phenomenon is seen in the realms of technology and virtual reality. With today’s technological advancements, our brain is capable of synthesizing our sense of virtual space into an immersive reality.

 

 

 

 

 

“Humans already live many different kinds of life: online is just one more of those kinds of lives.” -Tom Boellstorff, professor of anthropology at the University of California.

Second Life is an online virtual world, created in June 2003 by the San Fransisco based American firm Linden Lab. What’s particular about this virtual platform, is that it is an almost replication of our modern world, where faith commands our virtual– second–way of living.

Over the years, this online immersive game became very popular. Thanks to the unusual freedom users are encountering.  Indeed, people join the Second Life universe because once “being-in-the-world”, anything is possible. As a matter of fact, most of the users log into this platform in order to escape reality and experience a better life. Nowadays, we live in a society where norms are taking over our lives. Social interactions mostly rely on physical appearances, gender, social class, wealth, race, etc. What an individual didn’t choose to be or to own can constrain his life-achievements. For this reason, people choose Second Life, where they can design and plan their own perfect life.            Users live their Second Life through an avatar they decide of its name, physical appearance, gender, and age. This representation of their perfect self can go shopping, meet new people, be in a relationship, have sex, take university classes, travel anywhere they want, create buildings and mansions, and make a living.

Not to mention, this online video game has its own online economy, with its own money currency, the LindeX L$. 1 american dollar is an equivalent of 252L$. Big companies and small entrepreneurs invest in the Second Life business in hope to make a living and promote their products of the real life. Not to mention, regular users with a knowledge about coding can create virtual objects and sell them. They can also buy and sell lands.

Many users evoked the relaxing aspect of this game. Some of them said that they gained confidence by facing this reality with no fear, no restrictions. Not to forget, this game can become very addictive, and can jeopardize one’s own sense of the real reality where he was first raised.

That is to say that technology is powerful. Indeed, this game can be deemed as an illusionary idealistic world, where users are immersed in their new prefect identities and lifestyles. However, this virtual platform can be delusional, when users have to face reality again and leave the perfect dream they were virtually experiencing.

 

 

Experiential extremism, is an immersive interactive installation created by Bonnie Mitchell and Elainie Lilios in 2005, for the International Computer Music Association Commission Award. Its purpose is to control emotions and physical responses through the immersion of the public into time based and sonic events. The installation abstractly focuses on today’s society’s obsession with extreme activities, sports, and phenomenons.

Indeed, the creation of  an abstract environment causes people to gravitate toward thrill seeking and the emotional responses emerging before, during, and after physical and extreme activities. In other words, the space almost causes, maintains, and ceases adrenaline rushes. Density, intensity, and evolution, part of the interactive installation, are controlled by the viewer’s physical presence and his/her way of interacting with space. As a result, people are emotionally and psychologically affected. Thanks to electronic sensors placed throughout the installation, connected to computers generating  foreground and background projected visuals.

The installation is divided into three sections, three physical phases. The first area is called “Psych-up”, where people are exposed to the simulation of the psychological and emotional states of being engaged to an extreme event.

The second phase, called “event phase”, abstractly represents the intensity of an event.

The last area, deemed “the cool down phase”, mimics post- experience reflexion.

It is fascinating to consider how technology alters an individual’s senses and perceptions of time and space. From a phase to another, an emotion to another, people are impressively immersed in a new reality created by the artists themselves. Through the interaction with the psychological elements taking over the space, each visitor lived a unique and individual experience caused by sensory stimuli rather than realistic representations. The artists stated:

 ” These psychological elements possess great potential for future exploration, where environments become interfaces, and human presence communicates with tech and a seamless integration of sensation,communication, and art.”

 

Osmosis: a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one.

Osmose (1995), is an immersive interactive environmental art installation directed by Char Davies, a Canadian contemporary artist. In her artwork, Davies focuses on one’s own conscious self embodied in an enveloping space– the perceptual interaction between self and world. She believes that the boundaries between humans and machines can go beyond limits. Ultimately, the purpose of this installation is to highlight the dissolving of inner and outer worlds, mind and body, in the context of being alive in an enveloping world.

Osmose consists of a head mounted device visualizing flowing abstract textures and particles, and a motion tracking vest for breath and balance.  The choice of the title is very metaphorical. Indeed, it represents the immersant’s journey in these semipermeable virtual spaces: consciousness and body passed from a less abstract world (real life), into a more abstract one. As in osmotic crossovers, he/she is transitioning from a space to another, from a deteriorating landscape to another.

It is a full 360 degree immersion, incorporating breathing–the essence of life–and balance for navigation. As in a scuba diver’s practice, breathing in leads to floating upward, breathing out leads to falling, and adjusting the body’s position leads to changing direction. In coordination, sounds react to the user’s change of location and direction.

The immersant’s first breath leads to a clearing in a forest, followed by other metaphorical aspects of nature, including tree, leaf, clouds, pound, abyss, and the subterranean world. These abstract sceneries are interrupted by appearing and disappearing elements from the real world (surrounding the enveloping one), such as an algorithmic substratum representing the code used in the making of the virtual reality. They are meant to keep the users informed about the illusion they’re living. Davies also included some texts, as such:

… by changing space,

by leaving the space of one’s usual sensibilities,

one enters into communication with a space that is physically innovating…

For we do not change space, we change our nature.

-Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1964

 

The different immersants’s reactions are very connected to the text above. Indeed, the results of “being-in-the-world” are many. This include getting emotional, feeling they were alive, and rediscovering themselves. Thus, in the process of immersion, their natures have changed. This explains the choice of solitary experience; the artist aimed to deeply connect the immersant to his/her inner-self, through the ban of interaction with other people.

 

In the realms of art and human behavior, Prehistory is deemed as the key era prior to the understanding of human thoughts and innovation. Indeed, the oldest recorded art form in history is paleolithic. Prehistoric men used to narrate their hunting adventures and knowledge about their habitats through cave painting. Consisting of a set of semiotics that replaced what is known today as traditional writing, cave painting provides information about how people used to see the world, communicate, and live.

Archeologist Duncan Caldwell, discovered in French caves objects, drawings, and engravings that could possibly be the world’s oldest optical illusions found. They all represent a mammoth and a bison at the same time.

The following sculpture is a first example of shape-shifting through the method of overlapping lines. It can be looked at from two different sides. In the left picture, the short front legs and high back legs are characteristic of bison. Once flipped (right), we can decipher the tall front legs and the groove (depicting long hair), characteristic of mammoth.

Similarly, the drawing below is a modern representation of images from the walls in Font-de-Gaume, France. In this copy, researcher Henry Breuil highlights the overlapping of two mammoth and bison shapes.

Another way of shape-shifting is the incorporation of small details within the final product’s lines and materiality. In the carving below, Caldwell noticed that there are two eyes separately carved, in different emplacements. The upper eye turns the crescent into a tusk, and therefore the artifact into a mammoth. The lower one, beside the front leg, turns it into a bison. As mentioned in National Geographic, the carver placed the eyes on the sculpture’s front view on purpose, as a matter of perspective.

In a nutshell, these artifacts might provide us information about prehistoric ways of tricking the eyes through shape-shifting, and thus the understanding of prehistoric human psychology. Not only are these prehistoric archives reflecting the way people thought back then, but also the technical roots of what is used nowadays to create immersive optical illusions.

 

As humans, we are able to define the borders of delimited and narrow spaces with our eyes. Indeed, like animals, when visiting a new place, we instinctively analyze our surroundings. The key to vision is the absorption of light by the optical organ.        However, at some instances, the absorbed light might trick the eye, which leads to optical illusions within the depth of the place.

Three artists, Yayoi Kusama, Joanie Lemercier, James Turrel, and Pablo Valbuena, redefined depth in their works by creating optical illusions through the use of technology and reflective materials. Their main focus is manipulative light.

In her artwork entitled “Infinity Mirrored Room”, Kusama created an infinite and borderless depth with the use of mirrors and programmable LEDs. The hues and transitions of lights aren’t random, but manipulated by the artist herself.

In her installation entitled “FUJI”, Lemercier plays with the perspective of the landscape (considered as the depth) through light transitions. The installation consists of two LED screens projecting white motion graphics, and of an all-white space.

Joanie Lemercier, Fuji, 2013 mp4

In his artwork entitled “Breathing Light”, James Turrel digitally transformed an empty room into a wall of color. This borderless portal of intense color is made with manipulative LEDs that generate different hues of light. When in the room, visitors thinks that they’re standing in front of a still portal without noticing that the hues are changing.

In his installation entitled “Kinematope”, through moving lights, Valbuena redefines and repositions the depth of the place with speed and stillness. Sometimes the depth appears to be infinite, while at other times it appears to be too near.

Paul Valbuena, “Kinematope”, 2014, Gare D’Austerlitz, Paris.mp4

Overall, the use of methods involving light and technology helped the artists disorient the viewers standing in a no longer delimited space. Optical illusions made their sense of reality and knowledge about the space tricky.