The Double Entry Reading Page
Name: G. Dusty Webb
Date: March 7, 2013
Publication: University of Plymouth: Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research Vol. 10, Number 1
Article Title: The Aesthetic of Immersion in the immersive dome environment (IDE): Stepping between the real and the virtual worlds of further self-constitution
Author: Isabella Buczek of University of Plymouth
Information directly from the reading especially meaningful quotes.
Page 3…
In the immersion process the border between the canvas and the spectator or between screen and user dissolves, and the distance or physical separation between virtual and physical space is no longer given. The self can expand into the virtual, to test its own boundaries by abandoning the materiality of the limited corpus. This phenomenon can also be understood as a dialogue, and important exchange, which can be itself an illuminating experience for the self and the mind. If the subject is an individual in an auditorium and the object is changing between the physical space of a digital theatre surrounded by a 360degree canvas and the virtual world on the canvas, how can the encounter or the immersion process be described and even more important: how can it be induced.
Your response to the left hand column selection from the reading.
There is a common theme to Isabella Buczek’s writing about the digital dome experience. The Immersiveness of digital fulldome experience is more than just watching a movie. It is a felling, which engages the sense of sight and touch, through visual and audio immersion in the 360 degree environment. She goes on to point out, “The border between the canvas and the spectator or between screen and user dissolves, and the distance or physical separation between virtual and physical space is on longer given.”
Her interpretations reflect on an almost religious quality of the Immersive experience of FullDome. She points out that Youngblood has a vision of the Expanded Cinema: “When we say expanded cinema we actually meant expanded consciousnesss.”
She uses terms like IDE [Immersive Dome Environment] which is a digital theatre embracing the visitor with an all-encompassing moving image. She describes the experience as esthetic of plunge, an esthetic of emphatic and corporal experience, of space, as the process of plunge takes place between the real and the virtual space.
On page 6 she describes that what we see is a meditative illusion. Recentering: experience forms the basic condition for immersive reading. Consciousness relocates itself in another world of actuality, which reorganizes the entire universe of being around the virtual reality. This nonfactual possible worlds of the fulldome experience recenters us to actual which forms the basis for immersive readings.
She calls this the subjective perspectives in the IDE, and intimate and very personal moment, even though the individual is sitting in an auditorium with an audience of many others, and this is a shared experience. This brings us to experience others haptic (since of touch) and oral input while we are immersed in our own experience.
She concludes her thesis with stating, “The inertia of meditated viewing habits of the framed cinema, the convenience of leaving the exploration of the unknown space to the productive camera, and the letting the frame choose the right perspective of the audience all have a high degree of seductive power. The strength of seduction is one of the key elements in cinema or television.”
I enjoyed hearing or reading Ms. Isabella Buczek describe the IDE as an almost religious experience. Immersion is not just watching a movie… it is being there, and experiencing the story with senses that are felt deep within you.
Dusty's Trails by Dusty Webb 