10.54103/ai/19529
Water, whether surface or depths, recurrently appears in cinema as a motif and a material. The great symbolic importance this recurrence of the aquatic bears within film leads to calling its different uses into question, especially when it comes to the subaquatic. Addressing the question of the submarine allows going beyond water as a simple surface, and thus to move towards a real habitability of water. Making a history of underwater cinema that includes precinematic devices such as the public aquariums of the late 19th century enables the identification of an aesthetic community, as well as that of a common desire to stage a totalizing perceptive experience of the aquatic element and, in that way, of the image materiality. In line with the various cinematic underwater devices conceived to that end during the 20th century, virtual reality, as a total experience generator, also resorts to the subaquatic as a pretext to immerse the user in the work of art. The recurring fascination for the subaquatic throughout the ages, even more so with the rise of new media, demonstrates how water is a central feature to better define and archeologize the concept of immersion.
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Elise Jouhannet
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AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]
Hydrohumanities
Techniques and Poetics of the Submarine in Film: A Pretext for an Archeology of Immersion
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Elise Jouhannet
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Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University
2785-7433
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Hydrohumanities
en
Williamson, J.E., Gregory, C.L., “Submarine Photography,” in Transactions of the Society of Motion Pictures Engineers (New York: Society of Motion Pictures Engineers, 1921): 149-158.
Techniques and Poetics of the Submarine in Film: A Pretext for an Archeology of Immersion
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/article/download/19529/20012
2
             Techniques and
             Poetics of the
Submarine in Film: A Pretext
for an Archeology
by Élise Jouhannet
          Water
                   of Immersion
                     Underwater cinema
                     Aquarium
                     Virtual reality
                     Hydrohumanities




                      Issue №2            Year 2023
                      → Immersions and Dives:
                      From the Environment
                      to Virtual Reality
                      Edited by Roberto P. Malaspina,
                      Elisabetta Modena, and Sofia Pirandello
Techniques and Poetics
of the Submarine in Film:
A Pretext for an Archeology
of Immersion
ÉLISE JOUHANNET, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1052-5164
https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19529

Abstract                       Water, whether surface or depths, recurrently
                 appears in cinema as a motif and a material. The great sym-
                 bolic importance this recurrence of the aquatic bears within
                 film leads to calling its different uses into question, especially
                 when it comes to the subaquatic. Addressing the question
                 of the submarine allows going beyond water as a simple
                 surface, and thus to move towards a real habitability of wa-
                 ter. Making a history of underwater cinema that includes
                 precinematic devices such as the public aquariums of the
                 late 19th century enables the identification of an aesthetic
                 community, as well as that of a common desire to stage a
                 totalizing perceptive experience of the aquatic element and,
                 in that way, of the image materiality. In line with the various
                 cinematic underwater devices conceived to that end during
                 the 20th century, virtual reality, as a total experience gener-
                 ator, also resorts to the subaquatic as a pretext to immerse
                 the user in the work of art. The recurring fascination for the
                 subaquatic throughout the ages, even more so with the rise
                 of new media, demonstrates how water is a central feature
                 to better define and archeologize the concept of immersion.

Keywords         Water                   Underwater cinema                             Aquarium
                 Virtual reality         Hydrohumanities
To quote this essay: E. Jouhannet, “Techniques and Poetics of the Submarine in Film: A Pretext for
an Archeology of Immersion,” AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433] 2, no. 2
(2023): 91-109, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19529.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                  91                                         AN-ICON
                                 Taking the Plunge

The true eye of the earth is water.1
                             In Water and Dreams, Gaston Bachelard tries to
               define this element that is so hard to catch due to its fluid
               nature. It takes so many shapes, colors and movements
               that describing water with human words seems pointless.
               Therefore, to talk about water, language and imagination
               must borrow its properties. To Bachelard, a true imagina-
               tion is always in motion; like a fluid, it is always “without
               images,” or, at least, “beyond images.”2 “The world is an im-
               mense Narcissus thinking itself”3 and to get to the essence
               of things, the true poet must dive through the surface of
               images, through the mirror, to find themselves in the deep
               blue and finally feel things from the inside, as they really are.
                             Water is described by Bachelard as an optical
               device. The aqueous eye “looks back at us”4 but, like a
               screen, it is also a surface creating moving images. Accord-
               ing to Erkki Huhtamo, the first written mentions of the word
              “screen” in English can be found during the Renaissance
               period, describing objects supposed to protect from the
               heat of a fireplace. Those screens were made of translucent
               materials that allowed the viewer to perceive the move-
               ment of the flames. The flames, their physicality and their
               movement were as important as the screen itself because
               they create moving images, either abstract or figurative5.


       1 G. Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves, essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris: José Corti,
       1942): 45 [my translation].
       2 G. Bachelard, L’air et les songes, essai sur l’imagination du mouvement (Paris: José Corti,
       1943): 8 [my translation].
       3 J. Gasquet, Narcisse (Paris: Librairie de France, 1931): 45 quoted by G. Bachelard in L’eau
       et ses rêves: 36.
       4 G. Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde (Paris: Minuit, 1992) [my
       translation].
       5 E. Huhtamo, “Elements of Screenology: Toward an Archeology of the Screen,” Navigationen-
       Zeitschrift für Medien-und Kulturwissenschaften 6, no. 2 (2006): 35, https://doi.org/10.25969/
       mediarep/1958.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                 92                                         AN-ICON
              They gave depth and substance to what would otherwise
              be a simple surface.
                            Moving images and the screen are co-depen-
              dent. Together, they act as “a threshold, barrier, reflector,
              membrane, interface, or vehicle for light and sound, thus
              joining, separating, or reconfiguring the spaces in front of
              and behind it.”6 This definition can be extended to natu-
              ral elements – like fire or water – allowing for an expand-
              ed reconsideration of the screen. Doing a “screenology”7
              makes it possible to understand that the screen cannot be
              reduced to a technical apparatus but can be found every-
              where, including in nature. This “environmentalization”8 of
              the screen is in accordance with the concept of immersion
              in art which advocates for a genuine habitability of the im-
              age by constantly challenging the limits of the screen.
                            Defining immersive art is not an easy task. It
              is also difficult to delineate historically. Duncan White, in
              his attempt to map expanded cinema (one of the various
              manifestations of what we consider immersive art), demon-
              strates the tentacular complexity of such a genealogy, the
              beginning of which he situates in the 19th century.9 Extend-
              ing the definition of the screen and immersivity to nature
              highlights the porosity between the history of the arts and
              their apparatuses with the wider history of the relations
              between humans and ecosystems.
                            Natural elements must be reconsidered as the
              raw material of immersion and as fundamental immersive
              mediums, the various qualities of which inspired our mod-
              ern devices. Therefore, water can be considered a “natural

      6 A. Rogers, “Taking the Plunge: The New Immersive Screens,” in C. Buckley, R. Campe,
      F. Casetti, eds., Screen Genealogies: from Optical Devices to Environmental Medium
      (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019): 135-158, 140.
      7 E. Huhtamo, “Elements of Screenology”: 32.
      8 A. Pinotti, “Towards An-Iconology: The Image as Environment,” Screen 61, no. 4 (2020):
      594-603, 594, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaa060.
      9 D. White, “Mapping Expanded Cinema,” Vertigo 4, no. 2 (2009), https://www.
      closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-4-issue-2-winter-spring-20091/expanded-
      cinema/, accessed February 28, 2023.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                              93                                        AN-ICON
              screen” that allows the viewer to fulfill the old fantasy of
              physically going through the screen. The poet described
              by Bachelard experiences the literal definition of “immer-
              sion” by crossing the surface of water. The etymology of
              immersion comes from Latin mergere which means “bury”
              or “dive in,”10 and is defined as “the act of putting some-
              body or something into a liquid, especially so that they, or
              it, are completely covered.”11 As a concept and in its artis-
              tic applications, immersion is deeply linked to submarine
              liquidity, continuously reenacting this fundamental experi-
              ence of being submerged in water.
                            Let’s describe this situation: underwater, be-
              neath the surface, the diver is the only interface. Their body
              is changing environment and this change deeply affects
              their relationships to their surroundings. While the air on
              earth was an invisible substance in which they could breathe
              and move freely, in water the whole environment is visible,
              heavy, tactile, and unpredictable. At a certain depth, the
              submarine is a deadly environment. The amount of pressure
              on the body compresses the organism, giving a sensation
              described by divers as a sea “embrace,” “a true oceanic
              feeling.”12
                           Although this opposition between air and water
              is interesting phenomenologically, it is a bit binary. Indeed,
              even if invisible, if you concentrate enough on your breath-
              ing, you can feel there is no distance between your body
              and the air either. Also, the elements in our ecosystem
              are not so radically divided. To the hydrofeminist Astrida
              Neimanis, everything is made by and of water13 and this
              community of bodies questions the seemingly obvious

      10 “Immerger,” Portail Lexical du Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales,
      https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/immerger, accessed July 25, 2023.
      11 “Immerse,” Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
      definition/english/immerse, accessed July 25, 2023.
      12 M. Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater (Durham-London, Duke University
      Press, 2020): 65.
      13 “Astrida Neimanis ‘We Are All at Sea’,” RIBOCA channel on YouTube, https://www.youtube.
      com/watch?v=Hp1wo1irkQA&ab_channel=RIBOCA, accessed July 31, 2023.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                              94                                        AN-ICON
              oppositions between natural elements. Nevertheless, by
              being historically situated, these binary oppositions are
              helpful in understanding how watery imaginary has been
              built in western culture and how, according to this imaginary,
              devices were made to confront rather than adapt to water.

                                Water and Screen Materiality

                          There is a great community of thoughts and
              images between water and immersive devices, and, more
              generally, between water and the visual arts. This collab-
              oration can even be traced back to Antiquity. The Roman
              era provides one of the biggest testimonies: the Mosaic of
              Maritime Life (c. 100 BCE) decorating the floor of the Faun’s
              House in Pompei, representing water as rather flat and still
              despite the extreme realism of some animals.
                          All the potentialities of the surface of watery
              elements were explored at the Renaissance, with painting
              experiments on the reflective qualities of transparent me-
              diums such as mirror, glass and of course, water. Those
              experiments were theorized in the 18th century by Isaac
              Newton in Opticks (1704) which explores the reflection and
              refraction of light based on the various milieux it passes
              through, including water. The study of the surface of wa-
              ter is indeed indissociable from light. The laws edited by
              Newton must help to “neutraliz[e]” “the distorting power of
              a medium” and to avoid exploiting its joyful deformations.14
              Therefore, the water typically represented in 18th century
              paintings appears domesticated (Fig. 1).




      14 J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
      (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1990): 64.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                95                                        AN-ICON
                                                     Fig. 1. Jean Simeon Chardin,
                                                         Water Glass and Jug, ca.
                                                       1760, Pittsburgh, Carnegie
                                                                   Museum of Art.

                          The mastery of light is also the prerogative of
             cinema. However, contrary to 18th century painting which
             had a tendency to freeze water and insist on its reflec-
             tive qualities, early cinema displays a fascination with its
             movements, especially if they appear to be out of control.
             In the Lumière’s films, water is either discreet and playful
             as shown in the famous Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895) or, on
             the contrary, taking up the entire surface of the screen,
             merging the film roll and the sea in a single materiality like
             in View no 11: The Sea (1895). Later, in filmic history, Tere-
             sa Weenberg and Suzanne Nessim continue to play with
             the graphic properties and cinematic potentialities of the
             surface of water. In Swimmer (1978), the rectangular frame
             of the screen is doubled by the artificial frame of the pool
             as a way of controlling the volatility of elements, whether
             water or electronic snow. The editing alternates between
             wide shots of the water in which we observe the swimmer
             moving, and close-ups filled with splashes and focus on
             aquatic material often superimposed with openings of the
             swimmer’s body presented in strange and affected poses.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                     96                                 AN-ICON
              The focus on the turquoise water highlights its luminous
              diversity and ever-changing aspect as a perfect metaphor
              for the materiality of the screen’s images.15 Thanks to water,
              the video screen as well as the swimmer’s body become
              less rigid, less impenetrable. By blurring oppositions and
              distances, water enables the transgression of boundaries,
              including that of the screen’s/skin’s limits. This way, the
              screen gets closer to a “natural medium,”16 a watery one,
              enhanced by the technological.
                            Through this use of water, Wennberg and Nes-
              sim (as well as the Lumière brothers) implemented what
              Jeffrey Wall called the “liquid intelligence” of photography17
              which can also be applied to moving images as “liquid cin-
              ema”18 or “vidé-eau.”19 It is the idea that photography and
              cinema take from water in their way of being and of rep-
              resenting reality, adopting liquid properties such as trans-
              parency, reflection, fluidity, expansion and permeability. To
              Jeff Wall, water is an “archaism,” a “prehistoric image” of
              photography20 and thus, of cinema. Therefore, to address
              water is indeed to consider this element as a historical me-
              dium, a naturally cinematic one that can be archaeologized,
              and which, through its liquidity, inspired a good number of
              images, whether moving or not.

                                Liquid Cinema: 						
                                Filming Through the Aquarium

                           The history of cinema and water begins way
               earlier than cinema itself, in nature and other visual arts.

      15 F. Parfait, Vidéo: un art contemporain (Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2001): 96-100.
      16 H. Vaughan, “Toward a Natural Screen Philosophy,” in C. Rawls, D. Neiva, S. S. Gouveia,
      eds., Philosophy and Film (London-New York: Routledge, 2019).
      17 J. Wall, “Photographie et intelligence liquide,” in Essais et entretiens. 1984-2001 (Paris:
      École des Beaux-Arts, 2001): 175-178 [my translation].
      18 P.-A. Michaud, “Aquarium ou le cinéma liquide,” in F. Bovier, A. Mey, eds., Cinéma exposé
      (Lausanne: les Auteurs, 2014): 55-65 [my translation].
      19 F. Parfait, Vidéo: un art contemporain: 118-120.
      20 J. Wall, “Photographie et intelligence liquide”: 176 [my translation].

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                 97                                          AN-ICON
            Nevertheless, the aforementioned Lumière’s first movies
            give water a central role. The passion of the two brothers for
            means of transportation encouraged them to film not only
            trains but also boats, whether battleships like the Fürst-Bis-
            marck (View no 785: Kiel: The Launch of the Fürst-Bismark,
            1897) or smaller boats such as in the bucolic Boat Leaving
            the Port (1897). It is the same fascination for marine equip-
            ment that led French filmmaker Jean Vigo to make a barge
            sailing to Paris the main character of his movie L’Atalante
            (1933). If the landscapes passed by on the banks and re-
            flected into water transform the Atalante’s journey into a
            real mise en abyme of the movie’s progress, the movie is
            interesting for its famous underwater sequences. During
            one of the key moments of the film, the captain of the boat
            throws himself overboard. This is followed by a 2-minutes
            underwater scene where he whirls around in front of the
            camera with the superimposed image of his lost wife in her
            wedding dress, floating in the depths of the river (Fig. 2).




                                                     Fig. 2. Jean Vigo, L’Atalante,
                                                               1934, still from film.


                          Subaquatic sequences being quite rare at the
             time, this scene is a technical achievement. The first under-
             water photograph was taken in 1856 by William Thompson.
             It is a wet collodion photograph that managed to cap-
             ture the few beams of underwater light, creating a rather

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                     98                                    AN-ICON
              abstract image of the ocean’s depths. Another photograph,
              maybe more crucial, was taken in 1893 by Louis Boutan.
              This time the bottom of the sea appears clearly, giving the
              very first vision of an underwater world.21
                            Before putting a movie camera underwater, ob-
              servations of the wonders of seascapes were made pos-
              sible by aquariums. An engraving published in 1890 in the
              journal La Nature, shows the inventor of photochronog-
              raphy, Étienne-Jules Marey, taking shots of an aquarium
              that he installed in one of the walls of his house in Posil-
              lipo, facing the sea.22 Five to six years later,23 one of the
              Lumière brothers, Louis, collaborator of the same journal,
              was making a film named The Aquarium, which describes
              a tiny aquarium filled with frogs and fishes, the iron frame
              of which almost perfectly matches a projection screen “like
              an image inside an image,” a medium inside a medium.24
                            This technique of first filming the submarine
              through aquariums of varying sizes was then taken up by
              the filmmakers of the 1920s. Among the most famous is
              French filmmaker Jean Painlevé who not only wanted to
              scientifically document aquatic fauna, but also to create an
              artistic, playful and aesthetic object.25 Painlevé was filming
              aquariums and his friend, Jean Vigo, borrowed his tech-
              niques to film underwater scenes through the portholes
              of a pool.26 This is how the sequences of L’Atalante were
              made, as well as some of the scenes of the short film Taris,


      21 A. Martinez, “‘A Souvenir of Undersea Landscapes’: Underwater Photography and the
      Limits of Photographic Visibility, 1890-1910,” História Ciências Saúde-Manguinhos 3 (2014):
      2-3, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702014000300013.
      22 É.-J. Marey, “Locomotion in Water As Studied through Photochronography,” La Nature
      (1890) quoted in H.R. Shell, “Things Under Water: Etienne-Jules Marey’s Aquarium Laboratory
      and Cinema’s Assembly,” in B. Latour, P. Weibel, eds., Dingpolitik: Atmospheres of Democracy
      (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005): 327-331.
      23 We have found two different dates in G. Le Gall, Aquariorama: histoire d´un dispositif (Paris:
      Mimesis, 2022): 301 and P-A. Michaud, “Aquarium ou le cinéma liquide”: 59, 1895 for the first
      and 1896 for the second.
      24 P-A. Michaud, “Aquarium ou le cinéma liquide”: 58-59.
      25 P. Roubaix, “Le milieu subaquatique et le cinéma scientifique français,” in A. Martinet, ed.,
      Le cinéma et la science (Paris: CNRS, 1994): 150.
      26 L. Vigo, Jean Vigo, une vie engagée dans le cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2002): 89.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                 99                                           AN-ICON
              roi de l’eau, which observes the underwater movements of
              swimming champion Jean Taris, three years earlier.
                           The French cinema of the 1920s is closely re-
              lated to water. Due to economic constraint and a willing-
              ness to work independently from official studios, French
              filmmakers were drawn to film French landscapes, includ-
              ing coastlines. The constraint induced creativity, birthing a
              French fascination for water and seascapes, turning them
              into a frequent protagonist of the films of this period.27 The
              experimentations of Vigo and Painlevé are very relevant to
              understand the specific technicity surrounding the aquatic
              medium, which led to technical and aesthetic innovations
              inspired by the material qualities of water. The use of su-
              perimposition, fluid transitions, slow motion, combined with
              the surrealism and astonishment produced by underwater
              images all lead to a greater sense of immersion. Indeed, the
              use of water and liquid images narrows the frontier between
              viewer and screen. The closer the filmic apparatus gets to
              water, the greater the sense of immersiveness.

                                Cinematic Immersion in the 19th Century

                            Shared history between aquariums and cinema
              does not begin with Marey and Louis Lumière. By shooting
              a fish tank they were not only making scientific observations
              on the movement of undersea fauna, but also following a
              great tradition of displaying the submarine by means of
              aquariums, which began in the 19th century. With their
              camera, Marey and after him Louis Lumière, Painlevé and
              Vigo, are in line with a way of staging a “desire to see”28




      27 See on this subject: E. Thouvenel, Les images de l’eau dans le cinéma français des années 20
      (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010).
      28 G. Le Gall, Aquariorama:15.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                100                                           AN-ICON
              the marine depths, usually inaccessible to the human eye,
              and this “through”29 the aquarium glass.
                            It was Marey’s visit to Naples’ aquarium, which
              remains one of Europe’s oldest aquariums today, that first
              gave him the idea to install one at home.30 Conceived in
              1872, it was greatly inspired by the first monumental aquar-
              ium made for the Paris Jardin d’Acclimatation in 1861: it
              consists in a single room equipped with large aquariums
              along the walls, which are punctuated with columns dif-
              ferentiating the many tanks that operate like a “painting
              gallery”31 in motion. The Paris aquarium (Fig. 3) is consid-
              erably larger. The aquarium’s entire architecture can be un-
              derstood as a large “optical machine”32 fully engineered to
              bring light inside the tanks primarily via zenithal openings.
              Light has a crucial role to play since it can be used to cre-
              ate different ambiances and illuminate marine creatures in
              the most optimal way.33 The necessity of light in the func-
              tioning of aquariums also compares to cinema. The many
              windows created by the architecture constitute real glass
             “screens”34 lit from the inside, offering a frame to moving
              images staged to give a certain vision, a fantasy, of the
              bottom of the sea. Meanwhile, motion within the aquariums
              is reinforced by the outer movements of the visitors who
              watch images unfold like film reels as they walk along-
              side the tanks. Additionally, similarly to movie theaters, the
              building is submerged in obscurity to emphasize the liquid
              images.
                           A few years later during the 1867 Paris World’s
              Fair, two aquariums were built, one marine and the other
              for freshwater, both designed like underwater caves. The

      29 Ibid.: 38.
      30 H.R. Shell, “Things Under Water”: 328.
      31 G. Le Gall, “Dioramas aquatiques: Théophile Gauthier visite l’aquarium du jardin
      d’Acclimatation,” Culture & Musées 32 (2018): 85, https://doi.org/10.4000/culturemusees.2370.
      32 C. Lorenzi, “L’engouement pour l’aquarium en France (1855-1870),” Sociétés &
      Représentations 2, no. 28 (2009): 263, https://doi.org/10.3917/sr.028.0253.
      33 G. Le Gall, Aquariorama: 68-62.
      34 G. Le Gall, “Dioramas aquatiques”: 99.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                               101                                        AN-ICON
                                                                                  Fig. 3. Bertrand, The
                                                                               aquarium of the Jardin
                                                                       d’Acclimatation, in “Le Monde
                                                                          Illustré,” January 10, 1863.


              marine aquarium is particularly interesting because it fea-
              tured reservoirs not only on the sides, but also on the ceil-
              ing of the cave, which gave visitors the vivid impression of
              being both under the earth and under the sea, a sensation
              strengthened by the mise en scène of the space bathed in
              silent obscurity and covered by stalactites such as those
              found in coast caves. The idea was to experience new
              physical sensations by immersing the body in a peculiar
              environment, to disconnect visitors from their usual reality
              and have them dive in an environment they would other-
              wise never have access to.35 Not only was this aquarium a
              cinematic experience, a moving light image experiment, it
              was also in itself an installation in the most contemporary
              meaning of the word: an all-encompassing environment.
                           Although less known, this last aquarium is the
              one that inspired Jules Vernes in his description of the Nau-
              tilus in Twenty Leagues under the Sea, which was published
              a few years after the World’s Fair (1869-70).36 It is also this


      35 C. Lorenzi, “L’engouement pour l’aquarium en France”: 261-264.
      36 M.-P. Demarck, D. Frémond, eds., Jules Vernes, le roman de la mer (Paris: Seuil, 2005): 82.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                               102                                           AN-ICON
              very book that inspired American filmmaker John Ernest
              Williamson to make the first underwater film in 1914.

                                Inventing the Sea: Underwater Films

                           Williamson’s film is interesting from many per-
              spectives. From a media archeology viewpoint, the appa-
              ratus he invented is highly symptomatic of the constraints
              inherent to the submarine milieu (Fig. 4).




                                                            Fig. 4. How Submarine Movies are Made,
                                                             in “Transactions of the Society of Motion
                                                    Pictures Engineers,” New York: Society of Motion
                                                                       Pictures Engineers 153 (1921),
                                                                 Washington DC, Library of Congress.



                           Thirty Leagues under the Sea is a silent short
              film showing sights of the Bahamas and its marine fauna,
              at first fished and brought to the surface by force, then
              staged in a 5-minutes underwater scene. The Bahamas was
              chosen for its clear transparent waters which compensat-
              ed for the lack of undersea light, one of the major issues
              with underwater filming.37 To counter the obscurity of the
              depths, Williamson conceived a complementary lighting
              system using a large spotlight hanging from the ship that

      37 B. Taves, “A Pioneer Under the Sea,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 55, no. 15
      (1996), https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9615/sea.html, accessed by 06/01/2022.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                               103                                           AN-ICON
              would illuminate the sub-seascape. Since analog cameras
              could not be used underwater, Williamson used a folding
              tube underneath the boat, leading to a “photosphere,” a
              spheric observational chamber equipped with a cone that
              resembles the objective of a camera,38 shaped like a port-
              hole which circles the lens. That way, Williamson would
              be able, from the boat, to go down the tube into the pho-
              tosphere, providing a dry space to film various scenes of
              marine life. Williamson’s apparatus shows that diving under
              water requires adjustments, devices and shapes that differ
              from preexisting ones used on land. In the context of a “sur-
              rounding medium”39 such as the aquatic, spheres, globes,
              and bubbles are better adapted to immersion than for in-
              stance a cube, however easier to manufacture. Indeed, just
              as in space, roundness is suited to withstanding underwater
              pressure.40 That is why underwater exploration equipment
              will systematically be spherical following Williamson.
                           The story of underwater exploration is also a
              story of cinema, all underwater devices also being used
              to capture moving images. One thinks for example of the
              Bathysphere (Fig. 5) designed by Otis Barton and William
              Beebe in 1930, a sphere equipped with three portholes
              and connected to a ship by a cable that allows deeper and
              deeper descent into the depths of the ocean, sometimes
              with a camera. Like the aquariums, the photosphere and
              the Bathysphere allow the immersion of their inhabitants
              at the very heart of the sea and circularize the relationship
              to the environment. More than simple observatories, they
              allow the whole body to come as close as possible to the
              substance of water and, therefore, as close as possible to


      38 J.E. Williamson, C. L. Gregory, “Submarine Photography,” Transactions of the Society of
      Motion Pictures Engineers (New York: Society of Motion Pictures Engineers, 1921): 153.
      39 A. Somaini, “The Atmospheric Screen: Turner, Hazlitt, Ruskin,” in C. Buckley, R. Campe, F.
      Casetti, eds., Screen Genealogies: 169.
      40 J. Brugidou, F. Clouette, “Habiter les abysses? D’une architecture du confinement à la co-
      création de mondes,” Techniques & Culture 75 (2021): 6, https://doi.org/10.4000/tc.15690.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                               104                                         AN-ICON
                                                              Fig. 5. Leo Wehrli, Margrit Wehrli-Frey,
                                                                   Beebe’s Bathysphere in “National
                                                               Geographic Magazine,” 1934. © ETH
                                                                       Library Zürich, Image Archive.


              the image, thus enabling the body “to navigate in a three-di-
              mensional environment.”41
                            However, if the goal – especially when the cam-
              era is carried by scientific missions – is objectivity, recorded
              visions are often influenced by the ideologies of their time.
              Williamson’s movie is shaped by Western imperialism which
              goes along with an underwater imaginary inherited from the
              aquariums of the 19th century. The ocean, like other terri-
              tories, is considered a space to conquer, enslave, civilize,
              along with its inhabitants, a space without time, borders or
              history.42 The underwater scenes in Thirty Leagues under
              the Sea depict the seabed as a place of danger and fasci-
              nation, a danger Williamson creates himself by hanging a

      41 P. Roubaix, “Le milieu subaquatique et le cinéma scientifique français”: 162-163 [my
      translation].
      42 N. Starosielski, “Beyond Fluidity: A Cultural History of Cinema Underwater,” in S. Rust, S.
      Monani, S. Cubitt, eds., Ecocinema Theory and Practice (London-New York: Routledge, 2013): 149.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                105                                          AN-ICON
               dead horse face down in the water in the hope of attracting
               a shark that he will then kill with his bare hands. Williamson
               did not want to simply document underwater fauna and
               flora, he also sought to present the fight of the western
               man against wild nature and its inhabitants.43
                             This colonial and imperialist imaginary contin-
               ues in the second part of the 20th century, like in the famous
               movies of Jacques-Yves Cousteau.44 Therefore, even if
               shapes are changing within the submarine, few films revolu-
               tionize their content. The submarine apparatuses also carry
               technical and ideological confrontation to the environment
               they seek to explore, a reinvention of the submarine rather
               than a true understanding of its beings and functioning.

                                  Virtual Underwater Ecologies

                            Rethinking the materiality of the screen, of im-
               ages and of relationships to the environment through the
               prism of water aims to blur the distance between the view-
               er’s body and what is being experienced; the further we
               progress in the history of the link between images and water,
               the more that distance shrinks to the point of (almost) dis-
               appearing. Immersive art in its most contemporary aspects
               such as virtual reality, also rhymes with the absence of dis-
               tance between oneself and one’s environment.45 VR makes
               it possible to reproduce the real experience of a body in a
               given environment as faithfully as possible and thus to go
               beyond an ordinary experience, making it feel and become
               something else.46 VR is one of the most accomplished ver-
               sions of immersion thanks to its device, often reduced to
               a Head Mounted Display (HMD) which makes it possible


      43 Ibid.: 154-155.
      44 See ibid. for a complete analysis.
      45 However, the absence of distance is one of the major criticisms formulated against virtual reality
      by O. Grau in Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003): 202-203.
      46 A. Rogers, “Taking the Plunge”: 152-154.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                   106                                             AN-ICON
              to simultaneously contain and open perception towards
              another space.
                            Water, particularly in its submarine application,
              is very attractive to virtual reality as an unframed, haptic
              manifestation of a milieu that can be experienced by the
              whole body, which corresponds to virtual reality’s search for
              total perception. The fluidity of water is commensurate with
              the fluidity of virtual images in being easily transgressed,
              crossed as well as expanded and distorted. Virtual environ-
              ments are in a way liquid, a liquid that cannot be touched,
              a missing materiality. Even if virtual perception is a totaliz-
              ing experience, it is also built in relation to a fundamental
              absence. What I aim to touch in the virtual world escapes
              me instantly.
                            VR is a reality, effectively perceived, but it is
              also a virtual one, a program, a simulation. Incidentally, VR
              has no obligation to correspond to physical reality, above
              all when it is used for an artistic purpose. For Ariel Rogers,
              VR does not need to be understood through the dualism
              of illusion and truth. VR does not intend to “displac[e] the
              material world” but to “penetrate its surface.”47 VR is there-
              fore built on an absence, a lack of the physical world, but
              it is also a more-than-the-world, exceeding and renewing
              its perception.
                            The subaquatic experience is similar to that of
              VR. Being underwater enables an increased perception of
              some of the senses and disrupt the functioning of others.
              What it gains in touch, it loses in sight, hearing and smell.
              The diver’s body is already an augmented body, trained to
              breathe, see and move underwater. Because everything that
              is perceived from under the sea dissolves in the liquid mass
              and the darkness of the depths, it constitutes a perfect
              space for the projections of the imagination. Symbolically,
              the subaquatic therefore exceeds the common terrestrial

      47 Ibid.: 151.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                      107                             AN-ICON
              world because it functions according to different laws and
              principles, which authorize the creation of new possibilities
              and fantasies.48 VR and subaquatic environments are a world
              in the world, a temporary accessible bubble for humans to
              feel their bodies and surroundings otherwise.
                           One of the most renowned works in this regard
              is Osmose by Char Davies (1995). The “immersive virtual
              space”49 created by Char Davies is a reality in which the
              frontiers between various elements can be crossed smooth-
              ly, almost without noticing. One passes without hindrance
              from the clouds to the darkness of the forest, to the depth
              of a pond or even under the ground. All these elements
              are rendered in a transparent and luminous way, bypass-
              ing the surfaces and enabling the sight of the interior of
              things. Virtual reality makes it possible to “penetrate” the
              surface of reality, to highlight areas of the world beyond our
              awareness.50 Char Davies does not want to create a reality
              from scratch but rather to reveal, increase, sublimate and
              transform our sensorium by means of the virtual.51
                           To achieve this end, Char Davies drew on her
              own experience as a scuba diver, which inspired her to
              create Osmose.52 I have not been able to find out if the
              first images of the demonstration of Osmose representing
              the ocean floor with a diver swimming were part of the im-
              mersive experience, or if they were added after the video
              was edited.53 Nevertheless, it is clear that for Davies, the
              point is to dive into Osmose and let oneself be carried by
              its elements. This way, Davies not only uses water as a
              motif in VR but as a way of experiencing the artwork. The
              experience is even more similar to scuba diving as the

      48 M. Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater: 78.
      49 C. Davies, “Landscape, Earth, Body, Being, Space and Time in the Immersive Virtual
      Environments Osmose and Ephemere,” in J. Mallory, ed., Women, Art, and Technology
      (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003): 327.
      50 A. Rogers, “Taking the Plunge”: 151.
      51 C. Davies, “Landscape, Earth, Body”: 322.
      52 O. Grau, Virtual Art: 198.
      53 See: http://www.immersence.com/osmose/, accessed July 25, 2023.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                              108                                        AN-ICON
             “immersant” floats through Osmose thanks to their breath-
              ing, which is recorded by sensors located in the vest on
              their torso. Breath removes any distance between the im-
              mersant and the surrounding reality, connecting them more
              deeply physically.54 The whole body of the participant is
              thus involved in the process as are most of their senses,
              as each virtual zone crossed has a soundscape which is
              diffused in stereo in the HMD.
                            Immersion in Osmose lasts about fifty min-
              utes. It is a complete and contemplative experience that
              intends to redefine our relationship with natural elements
              and technology. Char Davies is in line with the history of
              underwater cinema. She inherits from its technical and
              aesthetic achievements, but transcends them by pushing
              their last limit, the screen itself. By choosing to embody
              the experience of water, to adapt to rather than confront
              the surroundings, she challenges the western submarine
              paradigm. It is a fundamental work for many other virtual55
              (and non virtual) pieces that also investigate the relation
              between immersion and the aquatic element, an element
              that is no longer seen as a single motif, but as a genuine
              way of being and of experiencing an artwork.
                            A special thanks to Marion Magrangeas for their
              precious help and numerous suggestions in correcting my
              English for this paper.




      54 C. Grammatikopoulou, “Breathing Art: Art as an Encompassing and Participatory
      Experience,” in. C. Van den Akker, S. Legêne, eds., Museums in a Digital Culture (Amsterdam:
      Amsterdam University Press, 2016): 48.
      55 For an interesting selection of virtual works involving water, see: https://www.radiancevr.co/
      categories/water/, accessed July 25, 2023.

ÉLISE JOUHANNET                                 109                                          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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