Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Immersive Images

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Present Image

  • 323 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter deals with immersive images and addresses the way in which a number of contemporary image-based practices (360-degree video and photography; virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) seek to wrap viewers in the image and to blur the distance between viewer and viewed, self and world. Building on a dialogue between phenomenology and art history, this chapter suggests that immersion is an important modality through which human beings, in different times and places, have engaged with the visual world. The chapter addresses immersive images as a form of resistance against the historical hegemony of geometrical perspective and explores some key theoretical challenges in this field: the frame, projection, movement, and visual truth.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    I use this Aristotelain inspired term to address that sense of awareness of the self in connection to the world that does not build on the Cartesian divide between body and mind.

  2. 2.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6x9-a-virtual-experience-of-solitary-confinement

  3. 3.

    “Mixed reality” is an overarching term conventionally used for addressing, in the words of Milgram et al. 1994, any given point within the continuum that goes from “real” to “virtual” environments.

  4. 4.

    I use this label with a high degree of relativity given that my methods do not coincide with those of art historians, yet I believe that such label may be useful for giving a view of the approach that characterizes the first part of the chapter.

  5. 5.

    I do not, however, believe that immersive image-making can be made to begin at whatever point of time. Cave paintings, for instance, do in my view appear to be a direct response to the natural shape of an environment (the cave) rather than a deliberate attempt at shaping an immersive visual experience.

  6. 6.

    Herculaneum and Pompeii are also the only two cities where the Romans abandoned their approach to painting as something that requires a canvas or table and started instead engaging with real lived space.

  7. 7.

    I cannot refrain from pointing out the nearly bizarre similarity between such churches and today’s VR, both of which contain marvels on the inside and are ugly on the outside.

  8. 8.

    Gombrich suggested that images inhabit the realm of nature as opposed to words, which rely on conventions and culture (2006).

  9. 9.

    Gramsci (1971) used the term “hegemony” to address the manifold ways in which the ruling capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) managed to establish and maintain its control of society.

  10. 10.

    According to Pinney (2001), technology “suggests the apparatus of the camera and its chemical way of referring to the world. Magic suggests a contagion of qualities and the ability to produce effects beyond the range of ordinary bodies” (p. 12).

  11. 11.

    http://www.naoyukiogino.jp/makai

  12. 12.

    Photosynth was launched in 2006 and Facebook incorporated the possibility of viewing panoramic images on its stream only in 2016. Many more apps have been born recently. Among them are Immersive (by Trapcode), FOV (Sixtime etage), Go Immersive (Salon Films), and Immersive Media.

  13. 13.

    We could discuss the extent to which such images actually can be addressed as predictive.

  14. 14.

    Thank you Eva Theunissen for our conversations on trauma and exceptionality in the context of VR. I am looking forward to more collaborative work conducted in this area. I am also indebted to Bram Vroonland and Ian Swerts for interesting conversations and work on the same subject.

  15. 15.

    In Gallagher and Cole’s words, “body schema can be defined as a system of preconscious, subpersonal processes that play a dynamic role in governing posture and movement” (Gallagher and Cole 1998:p. 131).

  16. 16.

    Although I use the notion of apparatus in a much narrower sense than what Foucault did in his famous Power/Knowledge (see 1980), I believe that in the case that I am describing, a technological tool can indeed have a strategic function and be inscribed into a play of power.

  17. 17.

    Exceptions are Culler (2014), Frizot (1997), and Hoelzl and Marie (2015).

  18. 18.

    The ray traces a connection between the ideal point of observation and the ideal vanishing point contained by the image stitching hence together the two triangles that make up the core design of geometrical perspective.

  19. 19.

    This is the term that Ingold adopts in his analysis of vision and movement.

  20. 20.

    This eventually led Ingold to direct his work toward “lines of flight” (2011, p. 14) that are constantly mutable and impermanent, like the lines drawn by the water of a river.

  21. 21.

    His masterpiece The Royal Gates (1977) explores this notion with regard to sacred icons.

  22. 22.

    For some interesting debates regarding this, see https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/xd5em3/experiencing-deep-the-virtual-reality-game-that-relieves-anxiety-attacks-142; https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/post-vr-sadness/511232/

References

  • Argan, G.C. 2008. Storia dell’Arte Italiana: Dall’Anticihita’ al Medioevo. Milano: RCS Libri.

    Google Scholar 

  • Babb, L.A. 1981. Glancing: Visual Interaction in Hinduism. Journal of Anthropological Research 37 (4): 387–401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard, J. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, W. 2007. Infanzia berlinese. Torino: Einaudi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buczek, I. 2014. The Immersive Dome Environment (IDE): Old Concept in a New Light or a New Hybrid Medium to Enhance Human Cognitive Faculty? Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 10 (2 & 3): 247–254.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clanton, C. 2016. Uncanny Others: Hauntology, Ethnography, Media. PhD thesis, Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Culler. 2014. The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels. Cambridge, MA/London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. 1997 (1968). Differenza e ripetizione. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dolezal, L. 2009. The Remote Body: The Phenomenology of Telepresence and Re-Embodiment. Human Technology An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments 5 (2): 208–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dundes, A. 1980. Interpreting Folklore. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Easwaran, E. 1978. Meditation: Commonsense Directions from an Uncommon Life. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eck, D. 1998. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, U. 1988. Sugli Specchi ed altri Saggi. Milano: Bompiani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, E. 2006. Photographs and the Sound of History. Visual Anthropology Review 1 & 2: 27–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elsaesser, T. 2013. The “Return” of 3-D: On Some of the Logics and Genealogies of the Image in the Twenty-First Century. Critical Inquiry 39 (2): 217–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Favero, P. forthcoming. To Swallow or to Get Swallowed, This Is the Question: On Viewing, Viewers and Frames in the Context of “New” Images. In An Anthropology of Contemporary Art, ed. T. Fillitz. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Florensky, P. 1977. Le porte regali. Milano: Adelphi.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1993. Lo spazio e il tempo nell’arte. Milano: Adelhi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flusser, V. 2006. Per una filosofia della fotografia. Milano: Mondadori.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frizot, M. 1997. Un dessein projectif: la photographie. In Projections. Le transport de l'image (catalogue de l'exposition), 73–93. Paris: Tourcoing, Hazan-Le Freznoyy-AFAA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S., and J. Cole. 1998. Body Image and Body Schema in a Deafferented Subject. In Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader, ed. D. Welton, 131–148. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gennep, Van. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, J. 2014 (1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Itaha: Cornell University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilardi, A. 2002. Storia della fotografia pornographica. Milano: Mondadori.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gombrich, E.H. 2006. The Story of Art. London: Phaidon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grau, I. 1999. Into the Belly of the Image: Historical Aspects of Virtual Reality. Leonardo 32 (5): 365–371. (Seventh New York Digital Salon).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grau, O. 2003. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, M.B.N. 2004. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA/London UK: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, A. 1999 (1951). The Social History of Art: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, vol. 1. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath, S., and T. de Lauretis, eds. 1980. The Cinematic Apparatus. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helmreich, S. 2007. An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs, and Transductive Ethnography. American Ethnologist 34: 621–641.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoelzl, I., and R. Marie. 2015. Softimage: Towards a New Theory of the Digital Image. London: Intellects.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, E. 1989 (1952). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, Tim. 2010. Ways of Mind-Walking: Reading, Writing, Painting. Visual Studies 25 (1): 15–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. New York/London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay, M. 1988. Scopic Regimes of Modernity. In Vision and Visuality, ed. H. Foster, pp. 3–23. Seattle: Bay Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay, M. 1994. Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapferer, B. 1991 (1983). A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Oxford/Washington, DC: Berg/Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kittler, F. 2010. Optical Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knott, K. 1999. Induismo. Torino: Einaudi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lippit, A.M. 1999. Three Phantasies of Cinema – Reproduction, Mimesis, Annihilation. Paragraph 22 (November): 213–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marks, L.U. 1998. Video Haptics and Erotics. Screen 39: 331–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marks, L.U. 2000. A Tactile Epistemology: Mimesis + Haptic Visuality + Haptic Visuality and Cultural Difference. In The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, ed. L.U. Marks, 138–145 & 162–170. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marks, L. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massumi, B. 1987. Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari. http://www.anu.edu.a/HCR/first_and_last/works/realer.htm

  • McLuhan, M. 1994 (1964). Understanding the Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McQuire, S. 1998. Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996 (1964). Eye and Mind. In The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. B. M. Smith, 121–149. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metz, C. 1982. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Milgram, P., H. Takemura, A. Utsumi, and F. Kishino. 1994. Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum. SPIE 2351: 282–292. Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mirzoeff, N. 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, B. 2001. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinney, C. 1997. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. London: Reaktion Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Piercing the Skin of the Idol. In Beyond Aesthetics, ed. C. Pinney and N. Thomas, 157–179. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sendler, E. 1985. L’Icona: Immagine dell’Invisibile. Milano: Edizioni San Paolo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheikh, G. 1997. The Making of a Visual Language: Thoughts on Mughal Painting. Journal of Arts and Ideas 30-31: 7–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sloterdijk, P. 2011. Bubbles Spheres Volume I: Microspherology. Semiotext(e)/Foreign Agents. Trans. W. Hoban. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, G.M. 2003. Film Structure and the Emotion System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sobchack, V. 1990. The Active Eye: A Phenomenology of Cinematic Vision. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 12: 21–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, L., ed. 1994. Visualizing Theory. Selected Essays from V.A.R. 1990–1994. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tucci, G. 1992. Storia della filosofia Indiana. Bari: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, V. 1964. Symbols in Ndemdu Ritual. In Closed Systems and Open Minds, ed. M. Gluckman. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca/London: Cornell Univ. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Lier, H. 2007 (1983). Philosophy of Photography. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Visch, V.T., S. Tan, and D. Molenaar. 2010. The Emotional and Cognitive Effect of Immersion in Film Viewing. Cognition & Emotion 24 (8): 1439–1445.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Von Glasenapp, H. 1967. Indiens Religioner. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi), University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Paolo S. H. Favero

Authors
  1. Paolo S. H. Favero
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Favero, P.S.H. (2018). Immersive Images. In: The Present Image. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69499-3_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation