10.54103/ai/22449
The present volume Immersions and Dives: From the Environment to Virtual Reality of the journal AN-ICON: Studies in Environmental Images is divided into two issues, each one dedicated to a specific thematic analysis, originated by the same conceptual core. The volume reflects on the concept of immersivity, which has become increasingly prominent in many different fields, including contemporary art. The constant reference to immersive experience is redefining the boundaries of artistic practice and fruition, highlighting the complex relationships between art, environments, and human perception.
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Immersions and Dives: From the Environment to Virtual Reality, Vol. 2, no. II (2023)
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                Immersions and
                Dives: From the
Environment to Virtual Reality,
Vol. 2, no. II (2023)
by Roberto P. Malaspina, Elisabetta Modena
and Sofia Pirandello Immersion
                   Dives
                   Installation
                   Virtual reality
                   Augmented reality




                   Issue №2            Year 2023
                   → Immersions and Dives:
                   From the Environment
                   to Virtual Reality
                   Edited by Roberto P. Malaspina,
                   Elisabetta Modena, and Sofia Pirandello
Introduction
Immersions and Dives: From
the Environment to Virtual
Reality, Vol. 2, no. II (2023)¹
ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, Università degli Studi di Milano – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2372-789X
ELISABETTA MODENA, Università degli Studi di Pavia – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9582-4875
SOFIA PIRANDELLO, Università degli Studi di Milano – https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4477-9199
https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/22449


                                    Introduction Vol. 2, no. II (2023)

                              The present volume Immersions and Dives:
                 From the Environment to Virtual Reality of the journal AN-
                 ICON: Studies in Environmental Images is divided into two
                 issues, each one dedicated to a specific thematic analy-
                 sis, originated by the same conceptual core. The volume
                 reflects on the concept of immersivity, which has become
                 increasingly prominent in many different fields, including
                 contemporary art. The constant reference to immersive
                 experience is redefining the boundaries of artistic practice
Keywords         Immersion                          Dives                           Performance
                 Virtual reality                    Augmented reality

        1 This essay is the result of research activity developed within the frame of the project AN-
        ICON. An-Iconology: History, Theory, and Practices of Environmental Images. AN-ICON has
        received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s
        Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. [834033 AN-ICON])
        and is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” of the University of Milan
        in the frame of the project “Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2023-2027” sponsored by Ministero
        dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR). The authors Roberto P. Malaspina, Elisabetta Modena,
        and Sofia Pirandello equally contributed to this paper.

To quote this essay: R. P. Malaspina, E. Modena, S. Pirandello, “Introduction: Immersions and Dives:
From the Environment to Virtual Reality, Vol. 2, no. II,” AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN
2785-7433] 2, no. II (2023): 4-11, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/22449.

ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO                       4                                          AN-ICON
                and fruition, highlighting the complex relationships between
                art, environments, and human perception.
                             The first issue of the volume, Immersions, dis-
                cussed the recent “immersive trend” as applied to artis-
                tic perceptual dynamics and to display design. Through a
                perspective that combines both history and theory of art,
                Immersions provided a broad and heterogeneous mapping
                of the many uses of this concept, exploring it in different
                historical contexts and methodologies of analysis.
                             The second issue, Dives, shifts the concep-
                tual focus to action. Diving, understood as a preparatory
                and essential movement of immersion, becomes a meta-
                phor for investigating in particular those artistic practices
                that have engaged in various bodily forms with immersive
                environments. Dives also includes a non-peer-reviewed
                section devoted to contributions by artists and indepen-
                dent researchers who present their strategies to dive into
                immersive spaces and environments, in order to physically
                explore them.

                                  Dives

Performances mark identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the
body, and tell stories.2
                             This issue focuses on performance art, as the
                practice that has best addressed and interrogated the re-
                lationship between body and space. Indeed, performance
                art has proven to be a privileged investigative tool for un-
                derstanding the ways in which this connection evolves and
                changes, even in the contemporary arena. One of its main
                characteristics is to transcend a specific material medium,
                in order to rather explore the complex meanings generated

       2 R. Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction (2002) (London-New York: Routledge, 2013): 28

ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO                      5                                            AN-ICON
                by the various encounters between bodies, spaces, art-
                ists, and audiences (think of the foundational practices by
                Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, FLUXUS,
                Viennese Actionism, or about the work of theatre groups
                such as Environmental Theatre and Richard Schechner’s
                Performance Group). The 20th-century avant-garde perfor-
                mance artists disrupted the notion of art as “artefact” typ-
                ically associated with artistic creation, and paved the way
                to new forms of practice that resisted aesthetic interpreta-
                tions based on the traditional division between subject and
                object.3 Furthermore, since its inception, performance art
                has challenged the passive nature of the fruition of the art-
                work, developing other immersive dynamics in the space/
                scene in which the artist moves, questioning the role of the
                spectator and of spectatorship in general.4 For example,
                according to Erika Fisher-Lichte, the presence of the public
                has the power to actively modify the performative space,5
                which every time results in a different event depending on
                the people who take part in it. Performance, therefore, has
                the capacity not only to activate and redefine a space, but
                above all, as stated by Richard Schechner, to create a sys-
                tem for the interweaving of art and everyday life that artists
                such as Allan Kaprow promoted.6 Ultimately, “performance
                exists only as actions, interactions, and relationships”7 with
                the complex ecosystem of objects, bodies, subjects, and
                technologies that inhabit the space activated by it.
                             Recently developed media such as Virtual and
                Augmented Reality seem to resonate strongly with such
                characteristics: they function exclusively in relation to the
       3 E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2004)
       (London-New York: Routledge, 2008).
       4 C. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London-New
       York: Verso, 2012).
       5 Fischer-Lichte, E., The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2004)
       (London-New York: Routledge, 2008).
       6 A. Kaprow, Assemblage, Environments, and Happenings (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966); A. Kaprow
       and J. Kelley, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
       7 R. Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction: 30

ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO                         6                                              AN-ICON
              user and their operative space, concealing at the same
              time the material nature of the medium, which becomes
              increasingly transparent.8 In so doing, they generate “an-
              icons,” namely images that present themselves either as
              immersive environments to be explored or as objects within
              the physical space.9 These so-called “new” digital technol-
              ogies seem to adhere to the sole dimension of action, lead-
              ing their users to a constant daily performance. In order to
              properly work, they have to include the user’s gestures and
              behavior, as well as the human skin and the retinal surface.10
              Consider the widespread practice of experimenting with
              AR filters, both artistic and otherwise. In this case, playing
              with a virtual addition could have ambivalent consequenc-
              es: on the one hand, it could lead to performative forms
              of political resistance or identity expression;11 on the other
              hand, it could induce body dysmorphia and facilitate the
              incorporation of advertising.
                            Being portable and wearable, they show a ten-
              dency towards miniaturization as well as innervation, which
              transform a concrete context into a responsive and intelli-
              gent environment,12 and the human body into a technical
              one. In this respect, Andy Clark famously stated we all
              are natural born cyborgs.13 The reference to the cyborg,
              however, seems to satisfy more a fascination for science
              fiction than the need for a deep investigation of the actual
              intertwining between the technical and the biological. The
              studies on performance art could help understand the way

      8 J. D. Bolter, R. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000).
      9 A. Pinotti, “Self-Negating Images: Towards An-Iconology,” Proceedings, 1, no. 9, 856 (2017).
      https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings1090856.
      10 M. Carbone, Filosofia-schermi: Dal cinema alla rivoluzione digitale (Milan: Cortina, 2016).
      11 R. Malaspina, A. Pinotti, S. Pirandello, “Emerging, Filtering, Symbiosing: Experiences
      in Augmented Art,” VCS. Visual Culture Studies 3, no. 4 (2022): 101-126; S. Pirandello,
      Fantastiche presenze: Note su estetica, arte contemporanea e realtà aumentata (Milan: Johan
      & Levi, 2023).
      12 E. Crescimanno, “Software e design: i media digitali nel quotidiano,” in G. Matteucci, ed.,
      Estetica e pratica del quotidiano, pp. 137-148 (Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2015).
      13 A. Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
      (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO                     7                                           AN-ICON
              the animate engages with the inanimate, based not on the
              paradigm of the implant but more on the one of relation.
              Interaction is preferred to assimilation, as claimed by the
              anthropology of material culture.14
                           Dives addresses the contemporary discussion
              between these latest digital technologies and performance
              art practices, considering the transformative consequenc-
              es on both sides. If, on the one hand, these technologies
              have an inevitable impact on artistic actions and practices,
              on the other hand, it is art itself that invests the means it
              uses with new meaning and cultural and political aware-
              ness. How has a new technological paradigm dictated a
              reconfiguration of the concepts of body and space, their
              interaction, and the artistic disciplines that study them?
              How much and what kind of space is there for the human
              body in technological and immersive environments? Can
              we speak of an excessive delegation of the body to technol-
              ogy? Can the proliferation of immersive digital technologies
              be read in continuity with the perspectives that character-
              ized performance in the 20th century, or does it herald a
              new way of interacting with and acting upon space? Is the
              performative dimension of the user more or less dominant
              than in the past?
                           In trying to respond to such questions, Valenti-
              na Bartalesi’s text opens the volume with a contribution that
              explores immersiveness in Laure Prouvost’s work, empha-
              sizing the connection between her environments and films.
              The paper demonstrates that immersion in her moving im-
              ages arises from the mixture of various strategies, including
              layered visuals, word-image relationships, montage, and
              non-human bodies as sources of sensory knowledge. The
              study employs a theoretical framework involving “system


      14 L. Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement (Cambridge:
      The MIT Press, 2016).

ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO                 8                                       AN-ICON
             aesthetic,” Munsterberg’s psychology, and haptic vision,
             while also tracing Prouvost’s art-historical lineage.
                           The text by Anthony Bekirov and Thibaut Vail-
             lancourt investigates cross-media storytelling in Alternate
             Virtuality Games (AVGs). In fact, AVGs like This House Has
             People in It and Ben Drowned involve a horizontal relation-
             ship between creators and participants, extending beyond
             art institutions. They offer immersive experiences uncon-
             strained by time or space and can be seen as liminal ex-
             periences, akin to anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept.
             These games empower 21st-century spectators to chal-
             lenge societal norms by gaining agency and criticising our
             relationship with digital devices in an information-controlled
             society.
                           Anna Calise’s analysis delves into those tech-
             nological advancements and changing epistemological
             paradigms which influence museum displays and their
             relationship with visitors’ bodies. It highlights the role of
             artistic intuition, technical innovations, and philosophical
             ideologies in shaping museums and discusses how visitors’
             bodies adapt to evolving epistemological norms, contrib-
             uting to shared ideas of art and knowledge in society.
                           Margherita Fontana examines the potential of
             interactive online spaces in order to challenge heteronor-
             mative structures. She analyzes in particular g(Ender Gal-
             lery), an artwork created in Minecraft in 2021 by Cat Haines,
             showcasing how the platform can serve as a playful yet
             critical arena for questioning gender norms and exploring
             trans* experiences.
                           In Techniques and Poetics of the Submarine in
             Film: A Pretext for an Archeology of Immersion Elise Jou-
             hannet considers the history of underwater cinema, includ-
             ing precinematic elements like 19th-century public aquar-
             iums, to reveal a shared desire to immerse audiences in
             aquatic experiences and image materiality. This fascination
ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO         9                             AN-ICON
              with underwater themes, extending into modern media like
              Virtual Reality, underscores water’s central role in redefining
              and “archaeologizing” the concept of immersion in art.
                            Stefano Mudu writes about Laure Prouvost’s
              art, as respect to how it immerses viewers in intermedial
              installations blending various objects from diverse origins.
              Her works create indeed eccentric atmospheres, erasing
              hierarchies between observers and observed. Using Ob-
              ject-Oriented Ontology (OOO), this paper analyzes Prou-
              vost’s project at the 58th Venice Biennale, Deep See Blue
              Surrounding You, as a hyper-enactment, which invites view-
              ers to construct non-linear narratives within interrelated
              objects/images.
                           Julia Reich’s essay explores acting within im-
              ages in AR and VR art, emphasizing the role of the (virtual)
              hand in creating immersive experiences. It discusses three
              forms of actions involving the hand: as a stage, a symbiotic
              contact zone, and a designing hand. Through artworks by
              various artists, it illustrates how the (virtual) hand facilitates
              immersive interactions in the virtual realm, blending dis-
              tance and closeness.
                            Referring to her own artistic practice, Sofia Bra-
              ga’s contribution reflects on the ambigous nature of cen-
              tralized social media platforms, which offer connectivity but
              also commodify personal data. Braga critically questions
              whether artistic engagement within these platforms can
              be considered an efficient strategy to avoid the ubiquitous
              surveillance culture.
                           Alice Volpi examines urban design through the-
              atrical perspectives. She suggests to experiment with navi-
              gating and designing cities, incorporating randomness and
              external direction to transform urban spaces into theatres.
                           The interview with Emilio Vavarella closes the
              volume. By answering questions on his work Lazy Sunday,
              part of THE ITALIAN JOB series, Vavarella faces themes
ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO          10                                AN-ICON
               like artistic legitimacy and virtuality. The artwork involves
               a 12-hours movie shot with a 360° camera, filming one
               ordinary summer day of the artist. Viewers could experi-
               ence it through a Virtual Reality headset in January 2022
               in Casa degli Artisti in Milan, which turned the residency
               into a shared, immersive experience.

                           The editors of the volume and the AN-ICON
              project would like to thank Pirelli HangarBicocca, Giovanna
              Amadasi, and Roberta Tenconi for their essential contribu-
              tion to the organisation of the conference “Immersed in the
              Work. From Environment to Virtual Reality” (Milan, June
              13th -16th 2022), a seminal occasion of reflection for the
              development of this thematic double issue.




ROBERTO P. MALASPINA, ELISABETTA
MODENA, AND SOFIA PIRANDELLO         11                            AN-ICON
AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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