AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]: Announcements
The journal AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433] is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal, stemming from the ERC Advanced project “AN-ICON. An-Iconology: History, Theory, and Practices of Environmental Images”. The journal is officially recognized as a scientific for Area 10 (Antiquities, philology, literary studies, art history) and Area 11 (History, Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Psychology). The journal aims to set out a groundbreaking interdisciplinary research field addressing the key challenges raised by the rapidly evolving contemporary mediascape, focussing in particular on the emergence of what can be defined as environmental images, namely an-icons. The journal is indexed by ERIH PLUS and listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
Download PDF Nowadays, virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies produce images that ask to be experienced and inhabited more than viewed and observed. Should the sense of presence and immediacy they convey be interpreted as a radical novelty, or is it rather the result of a more ancient and fragmented history of perception? A media archaeological approach lets emerge new strategies to conceive the history of media techniques by highlighting discontinuities and non-linear paths, bringing into focus their material conditions of production as well as practices, discourses, and narratives that contribute to shaping these media's cultural identity. This archaeological perspective may also be complemented with a genealogical one, considering the governance strategies and the powers of subjectification played by past and present media dispositives. In different ways and to various degrees, immersive techniques can be traced back to precursors as ancient as Palaeolithic cave paintings. Later on, they range from trompe l’œil depictions to pre-cinematic devices such as panoramas, dioramas, phantasmagorias, and from stereoscopic films to holograms, to name a few. The Archaeologies of Immersion section aims to single outunknown continuities as much as ruptures and counter-tendencies. Accordingly, a special attention can be also devoted to the narratives that have marked the dawn of an-iconic dispositives and accompanied the history of their effect across the centuries: ancient mythologies portraying proto-immersants, chronicles of forgotten media practices, fictional tales on both realized and imaginary immersive technologies, obsolete scientific discourses foreseeing a multisensory and interactive consumption of the image. This section of AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images aims therefore to open a permanent space to investigate and discuss the genealogy of virtual environments. Especially, unconventional approaches on overlooked research objects are welcome. In this perspective, Archaeologies of immersion encourages proposals related to the following domains: Prefigurations of immersive, multisensory, and interactive images and media. Aesthetics of an-iconic artworks and representations of the past. Imaginary media picturing the advent of virtual reality technologies. Literary and fictional accounts of immersion. The construction of epistemes and scientific paradigms that underpin virtual realities.
AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]
Download PDF A landscape painting hanging in a gallery represents reality; the image of a landscape offered by a drone monitoring a military area is an image that does something on reality. Since the tradition of the imagines agentes, up to the «operational images» described by Harun Farocki, scholars have sought to highlight in different ways the powers of images, their capacity to affect reality and to influence human reactions, but also to stare back at us and even to perform acts, in a word to single out the agency of images. An-icons are, as such, particularly well-suited to be operational, as they are actively engaged in operations that are meant to impact on and change reality. Virtual reality in particular affords the possibility to generate compelling, quasi-real, yet allegedly safe spaces in which to experiment with actual reality, and with subjects inhabiting it. Therefore, it proves of considerable practical advantage in those professional fields in which simulating reality constitutes a preliminary step towards modifying it. In addition to reproducing real environments, virtual reality allows as well to create new ones. Hence, it is valuable in those contexts in which actual reality has to be suspended and replaced by inhabitable virtual worlds. Technologies of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality have today multiple applications in several fields: design, architecture, and urban planning, where different solutions can be tested before being implemented; medicine, where surgical procedures can be designed and rehearsed on virtual patients; psychology and psychiatry, where individuals can learn how to overcome their disturbances by practicing coping strategies in virtual situations, or temporarily find relief in substitutive worlds; as well as education, marketing, training, the military field, the porn industry, and so on. As they become increasingly widespread, the practical usage of virtual environments and an-icons more broadly raise multiple and urgent questions. How are simulations or brand-new realities precisely built? To what degree and under which conditions do we find them persuasive? What does it mean to be exposed to virtual situations that nonetheless are conceived to impact on our actual self? What perceptual and cognitive processes do we undergo as we experience operational an-icons? And what ethical and/or political issues do an-icons pose in their operational life? This section of An-Icon. Studies in Environmental Images solicits contributions that monitor and critically reflect upon the applications and practical usage of an-icons as a new and sui generis kind of operational images. Methodological variety is key to this section. Therefore, in addition to theoretical works, we welcome empirical works that adopt the standpoint and research tools of empirical aesthetics and phenomenology, cognitive sciences, cognitive psychology, neurosciences, as well as sociology and ethnography. In this perspective, Operational An-Icons encourages proposals related to the following frameworks: State-of-the-art scholarship and further directions in the practical usage of an-icons. The technical mechanisms underlying the practical usage of an-icons. The experiential mechanisms elicited by the practical usage of an-icons. The social, ethical, and political impact of the practical usage of an-icons.
CLOSED - Just an illusion? Between simulation, emulation, and hyper-realism
Edited by Pietro Conte and Lambert Wiesing Deadline for full articles January 31st, 2022 Characters/word count: 24.000-30.000 characters (spaces included), or 3.500-5.000 words. Download PDF Recent years have witnessed increasing debate on the notion of illusion in the contemporary mediascape and on its role within digital environments, in particular with respect to virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies. Immersive environments can elicit in the user an intense feeling of being incorporated into quasi-real worlds. Consequently, and despite being traditionally given a negative value, the word “illusion” is more and more accorded a positive meaning as a key aspect of the phenomenon of immersion; as such, it is regarded as an important goal to be pursued by the creators of hyper-realistic and virtual environments. However, the concept of illusion is in itself plagued by ambiguities and even contradictions, and therefore in need of clarification. Does it imply an unconscious deception accomplished through a false perception, or is it rather a lusory attitude adopted in a peculiar kind of make-believe relation? What is the difference between illusion, deception, and hallucination? How does illusion turn into deception? How does deception become illusion? In simulated virtual environments, people experience a strong feeling of presence (place illusion) and react to what they perceive as if it were real (plausibility illusion) (Slater 2009; Hofer et al. 2020). At the same time, they remain perfectly aware that they are not “really” there, and that the events are not “actually” occurring. How is such conflict between knowing and perceiving to be explained, and is it to be regarded as a new form of aesthetic illusion (Koblížek 2017)? Moreover, virtual reality has the power to make the users feel as if they own and control a body (body-ownership illusion) that can look very different from their biological one. This can result into a transformation of self-representation, which in turn may cause a change in our attitudes towards ourselves or towards other people, thus helping reduce implicit racial and gender bias or mitigate health problems and mental disorders (Peck et al. 2013; Scarpina et al. 2019). Yet, what are the limits of virtual reality and of the possibilities it offers to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, promoting virtuous and socially adaptive processes of emulation? How to debunk the rhetoric (which has an ethic, social, and political meaning) behind the celebration of virtual reality as “the ultimate empathy machine” (Milk 2015)? Furthermore, “environmental” images often imply a variable degree of interaction with the observers; but is interactivity necessary to elicit illusion? Does the multisensory quality of the interaction affect the overall illusion effect? Given that immersive virtual environments are frequently inhabited by the users’ proxies, do avatars in their vast phenomenology enhance or rather diminish the degree of illusion? What is the relation between illusion and the “style” of the image? More specifically, is hyper-realism a necessary element of illusion or, as Gordon Calleja (2011) maintains, only one viable alternative among many others? What about the so-called “immersive fallacy” and the idea that, when plunged into digital environments, the user’s mind accepts what it perceives as reality (Salen & Zimmerman 2003)? In line with the research directions listed above, and instead of focussing on more traditional topics like optical illusions, this issue encourages contributions specifically addressing the following topics: The relation between traditional and contemporary accounts of illusion; The distinction between illusion, deception, and hallucination; Illusion in the arts and media: painting, sculpture, theatre, cinema and pre-cinematicdevices (panoramas, phantasmagorias, cinerama, circarama, totalrama…), videogames and other digital media; The notion of illusion as related to virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies; The different kinds of illusion (place illusion, plausibility illusion, body illusion) in immersive virtual environments; The role of illusion in generating an immersive effect and, vice versa, the role of immersion in producing illusion; Strategies to elicit (full) body ownership illusion within virtual environments; How illusion transforms our bodily-self, and how this reverberates on the possibility of overcoming social, racial, and gender biases; The role of (real-time) interaction and sensory-motor synchrony in immersive environments; The relevance of the classical concepts of Edmund Husserl’s contradiction (Widerstreit) and Richard Wollheim’s twofoldness in the very specific research field of virtual-, augmented-, and mixed-reality technologies. References Calleja, G.,In-Game. From immersion to incorporation (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2011). Hofer M., Hartmann T., Eden A.,Ratan R. & Hahn L., “The role of plausibility in the experience of spatial presence in virtual environments,” Front. Virtual Real. 1:2 (2020). doi: 10.3389/frvir.2020.00002 Koblížek T. (ed.), The aesthetic illusion in literature and the arts (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Milk, Chris, “How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine,” TED Talk (2015). Peck T.C., Seinfeld S.,Aglioti S.M. & Slater M., “Putting yourself in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias,” Conscious Cogn. 22:3 (2013):779-87. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.04.016. Epub 2013 May 28. PMID: 23727712. Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E., Rules of play: Game design fundamentals (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2003). Scarpina F., Serino S., Keizer A., Chirico A., Scacchi M., Castelnuovo G., Mauro A. & Riva G., “The effect of a virtual-reality full-body illusion on body representation in obesity,” J Clin Med. 8:9 (2019), 1330. doi: 10.3390/jcm8091330 Slater, M., “Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments,”PhilosTrans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 364:1535 (2009): 3549-3557.
CLOSED - Immersed in the work. From the environment to virtual reality
Immersed in the work. From the environment to virtual reality (2/I issue) edited by Roberto P. Malaspina, Elisabetta Modena e Sofia Pirandello deadline: 31/1/2023 In recent years we have witnessed a growing fashion which requires every experience to be “immersive”. This is, at least, what is suggested by the rhetoric of communication and marketing, promising immersions of various kinds, but with a common denominator which goes beyond a generic idea of attention as absorption (Wolf, Bernhart, and Mahler 2013): That of feeling physically enveloped and engaged interactively in a multisensory environment (Griffiths 2013; Liptay and Dogramaci 2016). Hence, we talk about immersive environments, immersive cinema and video, immersive exhibitions and installations and so on. Even though the term “immersion” has been used with some regularity only since the 1990s in reference to technologies such as virtual reality - – which at that time was being experimented for the first time outside the laboratories where it was developed in the late 1960s (Sutherland 1965;1968) - – some researchers have attempted to reconstruct a possible genealogy of immersive environments well before this date. Like an underground river, the immersive aesthetic experience would resurface in different periods, starting with cave paintings in the Paleolithic era and moving through to Pompeian frescos and trompe-l'œil, passing then from Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting to multimedia installations (Nechvatal 2009). A decisive moment for the design of these environments has been traced back to the 19th century, with particular reference to the 19th-century fashion of the ὅραμα (from the ancient Greek "view"), which saw the spread of devices such as the panorama, the diorama, the cosmorama, etc. (Grau 2003; Bordini 2006), as part of a wider “emotional geography” (Bruno 2000). However, one of the most significant moments in this history which has still not been sufficiently investigated in the debate (Modena 2021), is that of the installations and environments which arose in the first decades of the 20th century in the works of avant-garde artists of that time. In 1976 Germano Celant curated the exhibition Ambiente/Arte. Dal Futurismo alla Body Art, set up at the invitation of Vittorio Gregotti in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini for the 37th Venice Biennial. Here, as well as in the catalogue, the history of environments was reconstructed, starting from the beginning of the 20th century, when avant-garde artists began to create "wall boxes on a human scale" (Celant 1977, p. 6). These environments allowed the visitor to make a bodily entry into the work, going beyond the frame (Celant 1981; Ferrari and Pinotti 2018; Conte 2020) which contained the iconic space in the forms of the niche, door and window (Stoichita 1993), and the closed form of the sculpture that opened up into space and became environment. Since then, artists have increasingly favoured the construction of installations (Bishop 2005) and works aimed at producing enveloping, participatory and interactive physical experiences (Kabakov, Tupitsyn 1999; Reiss 2000; Bishop 2005; Groys 2009; Zuliani 2015), also making use of new technologies including virtual, augmented and mixed reality. The exhibition itself as an immersive device plays a significant role throughout the 20th century (consider the exhibitions of the Surrealists), so much so that the boundaries between artwork and exhibition become increasingly blurred in the contemporary tendency to set up large-scale installations, particularly in regularly staged international exhibitions, from the Venice Biennial to the Kassel documenta (Filipovic, van Hal, Ovstebo 2010). A chapter of this history also explicitly concerns the history of exhibition design and the relationship between design, architecture and the arts (Celant 2004). The physical presence of the visitor in the multi-sensory space of the work (Bishop 2005; Griffiths 2013; Liptay and Dogramaci 2016), as well as their role as an activator and experiencer are at the heart of any discussion of immersive contemporary art. Right from its very beginnings, Performance Art has been questioning the passive nature of the experience of the work, developing immersive dynamics in the space/scene in which the artist moves and involving the spectator in a dialogue which questions their role and the concept of spectatorship in general (Bourriaud 2001; Bishop 2012). More recently, the debate has focused on the empathic response to visual artworks (Freedberg 1989; Freedberg and Gallese 2007). Presenting itself at the same time as a space both exclusive (i.e. separated from the rest of the world) and inclusive (as it draws the visitor inside itself), the installation lends itself to forms of narration and storytelling (Bal 1999, 2000; Combrink & Allen 2019): Within the environment (analogue, digital or mixed), the artist sometimes leaves only clues or hints of stories; at other times they builds proper scripts based on real or plausible events or linked to fictional characters – just consider the growing role of science fiction in the building of utopian or dystopian narratives (Byrne-Smith 2020). At the centre of this critical reflection is also found the debate on the best way to preserve and respect the authenticity of complex installations considering carefully their time and site specificity (Ferriani and Pugliese 2009). Finally, the latest generation of immersive technologies and theories on the environmentalisation of the image (Pinotti 2021) suggest that we rethink Boris Groys’ claim concerning the possibility of interpreting installation as image and image as installation (Groys 2005; Modena 2021), thus confronting art history and theory with visual studies. The following is a non-exhaustive list of topics of interest to the issue regarding the concept of immersiveness: -the environmental installation and its history; -video art and multimedia installations; -Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art; -dialogues between architecture, design and art; -hyperrealistic and illusionistic art; -digital art, new media art, post-internet art; -art in virtual and augmented reality; -forms of immersiveness in the context of global art; -reenactment; -immersive works of a narrative nature. -the history of immersive exhibitions; -the history of staging; -the fashion of “experience” exhibitions; -designing the experience of visiting immersive art exhibitions. References Allen, L. Combrink, “Character (and absence) as a narrative key in installation art”, Literator, vol 40(1), (2019): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit. v40i1.1449 Armleder et. al., eds., Voids: a retrospective (Zürich: JRP-Ringier, 2009). Bal, “Narrative inside out: Louise Bourgeois’ Spider as theoretical object”, Oxford Art Journal 22-2 (1999): 103–126. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/22.2.101 Bal, Louise Bourgeois’ Spider: The architecture of art-writing (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001). Bishop, Installation Art. A Critical History (London: Tate Publishing, 2005). Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London – New York: Verso, 2012). Byrne-Smith, ed., Documents of Contemporary Art: Science Fiction (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2020). Bordini, Storia del Panorama (Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2006). Bruno, Atlas of Emotions. Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso, 2000). Bruno, Atmospheres of Projection. Environmentality in Art and Screen Media (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022). Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle (Dijon: Les Presses du réeel, 2001). Celant, ed., Ambiente/Arte. Dal Futurismo alla Body Art. Biennale Arte 1976 (Venezia: La Biennale, 1977). Celant, “La cornice: dal simbolismo alla land art”, in G. Celant, ed. Il limite svelato. Artista, cornice, pubblico (Milano: Electa, 1981). Celant, “Una macchina visuale. L’allestimento d’arte e i suoi archetipi moderni”, Rassegna (Allestimenti / Exhibit design), no. 10 (1982): 6-11. Celant, ed., Arti e architettura: scultura, pittura, fotografia, design, cinema, architettura (Milano: Skira, 2004). Conte, Unframing Aesthetics (Milano -Udine: Mimesis International, 2020). Ferrari, A. Pinotti, eds., La cornice. Storie, teorie, testi, (Milano: Johan & Levi, 2018). Ferriani, M. Pugliese, Monumenti Effimeri. Storia e conservazione delle installazioni (Milano: Electa, 2009). Filipovic, M. van Hal, S. Ovstebo, eds., The Biennial Reader, an anthology on large-scale perennial exhibitions of contemporary art (Ostfildernn: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010). Freedberg, The power of images: studies in the history and theory of response (Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Freedberg, V. Gallese, “Motion, emotion and empathy in esthetic experience”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 3 (2007): 197-203. Grau, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (Cambridge - London: The MIT Press, 2003). Griffiths, Shivers Down Your Spine. Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). Groys, “Multiple Authorship” in B. Vanderlinden, E. Filipovic, eds. The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005). Groys, “Politics of Installation” in E-flux journal reader 2009 (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009). Kabakov, M. Tupitsyn, V. Tupitsyn, “About Installation”, Art Journal, vol. 58, no. 4 (1999): 62-73. Liptay, B. Dogramaci, eds., Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media (Leiden–Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016). Modena, “Immersi nell’irreale. Prospettive an-iconiche sull’arte contemporanea dall’ambiente alla realtà virtuale”, Carte semiotiche. Rivista internazionale di semiotica e teoria dell’immagine, L. Corrain, M. Vannoni (eds.), Annali 7, Figure dell’immersività (2021): 71-78. Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals/Critical Distances. A Study of the Affinity between Artistic Ideologies Based in Virtual Reality and Previous Immersive Idioms (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009). O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) Pinotti, Alla soglia dell’immagine. Da Narciso alla realtà virtuale (Torino: Einaudi, 2021). Reiss, From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). I. Stoichita, (1993), “Marges”, in L’Instauration du tableau. Métapeinture a l’aube des temps modernes (Geneve: Droz, 1999): 53-99. I. Sutherland, “The Ultimate Display”, in Proceedings of the IFIP Congress 65. Washington, vol. I (London: Spartan Books, 1965): 506-8. Sutherland, “A head-mounted three-dimensional display”, in AFIPS Conference Proceeding, vol. XXXIII (1968): 757-64. Tedeschi, Luoghi di transizione. Forme e immagini di “passaggio” fra arte e architettura (Brescia: Scholé, 2020). Wolf, W. Bernhart, A. Mahler, eds., Immersion and Distance. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media (Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi, 2013). Zuliani, Senza cornice. Spazi e tempi dell'installazione (Roma: Arshake, 2015).