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In the forthcoming anthology What Does a Chameleon Look Like? scholars from art, culture and media studies backgrounds consider immersion in terms of aesthetic, historical, ethical, and political issues. Science and technology studies persistently took up the term immersion as an engulfing momentum of interactive engagement of man and technological device. Consequently, and as a result of the influence and prevalence of the concepts and terminology of computer related discourse, the phrase 'immersive environment' has been generally assumed to denote a 'virtual' environment. However, the extent to which immersion should be considered solely in terms of new media is questionable: the interconnection of modern society entails that considerations of contemporary art, theory, culture and consumer capitalism all lead towards viewing cultural practice and experience as forms of immersion. After all, technology is not only the pre-condition for contemporary culture, but is actively generated by it (fassler 2005); and rather than suggesting a restricted analysis confined to the consideration of particular media, the problematic of immersion encourages investigations into the long histories of 'interfaceless interface(s)' (bolter/grusin 1999:23) within art and media practice.
Liberating the concept of immersion from the technical and digitally-oriented rubrics under which it is often thought, What does a Chameleon Look Like? indicates that concept's applicability throughout the humanities. The publication assembles recent interdisciplinary work on immersion as technique and cultural topos: While the human-machine relationship has long been one of fascination and utopian positivism (manifested for example in the motif of the virtual voyager), we have seen the advent of new visual technologies such as television in the 1960s create a certain uneasiness towards immersion, or indeed an outright fear of it. As our societies become increasingly technologically determined immersion has become a pervasive phenomenon. In the 1990s the topos of immersion merged with discussions on artificiality and the aestheticization of everyday life. The focus of this discussion of immersion has been less technology per se, but rather the consumer worlds that it constructs and the reality that they give rise to. This apparent 'society of immersion' lead into a field for critique on the spectacle. Since the 1990s then, technology became conceptualized as a second nature, albeit one that is both internal and external (huhtamo 1995: 171). As a result, debates around human-computer-relationships (hci) returned - although this time with immersion taken as a basic human capability.
What does a Chameleon Look Like? holds that the concept of immersion extends far beyond the remit of virtual reality, and provides enquiries into the historical and contemporary significance of immersion offering new perspectives on aesthetics, technology and ethics.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Stefanie Menrath, M.A., geb. 1972, Studium der Ethnologie und Volkswirtschaftslehre in Köln und Heidelberg, lebt in Berlin und arbeitet zur Zeit als DJ, freie Autorin und Musikerin.
