Summary or preface to "Immersion in virtual Representation"

What is immersion?

Say, you decide to go to the cinema one night. You get on your bike, and cycle through the cold to the cinema in town. You buy a ticket from a moody teenager at the counter, you go into the cinema hall and get bombarded with popcorn by annoying children. The lights dim and on the screen you see in 2D different actors talking to one another. You forget the popcorn, the cinema hall and get completely carried away into the movie, you sympathise with the little girl walking up the stairs of the ghost mansion. You know that at the top of the stairs is a creepy man. You believe that it is real, because you are getting excited and a bit scared for the little girl’s life. But you don’t run forward to warn her.
 

Is this a temporary psychosis? You know it is not real, you are staring at the screen, the person next to you is snoring, you know the actors, you bought the ticket, but despite all those obvious clues you still believe for a moment that it is real, or at least, you feel involved and sympathise with the characters in the movie. This getting carried away, this compassion and sympathy, is what media theorists call ‘immersion in representation’. Although the representation is obviously not the same as reality, we feel, up to a certain point, that the represented actions are ‘real’.

Immersion is a concept which is hard to define. But it is an important concept. You could say that without immersion, representations could not exist. If you don’t get carried away by the movie, you will think: what am I doing here, I still need to do groceries, how much would these actors get paid, and what does this has to do with me? So without the immersion, representing media will not work. That is the reason why it may be worthwhile  to attempt to define the concept of immersion. Horror movies like the 'Hellraiser' series, are especially interesting for students of immersion, because the purpose of these films are to scare te viewer, which is a rather basic emotion.

Immersion is usually defined as: “The voluntarily exchanging of someone’s identity and environment for a by a representing media constructed identity and environment.”

This is a standard definition. You can find this definition in literature on the topic. When thinking critically this definition is not sustainable, however it is a definition we can work with. For example: you can get completely carried away and involved in a book or a movie, and in that case you take on the identities and the environment that are represented in that book or movie and for a moment you forget your own identity.

The decision to take on an immersive attitude towards representing media is always a rational, conscious one. You make a conscious decision to pick-up and start reading a book.  At that specific moment you can choose to do other things, but apparently you choose not to. Being in a state of immersion, thus being in a situation in which you exchange your identity and surroundings for one that is represented, is always irrational and subconscious. Your intelligence will not allow you to show your real emotions to obvious non-real situations. If you go see a movie, and a monster startles you or if you sympathise with the suffering main character, that is irrational because the evidence that the monster is not real and that the main character is just a well-paid actor is overwhelming. This overwhelming evidence can only be denied by irrational prepossessions.

You could state that making a movie, writing a book or painting a picture (in short: making a representation) solely has the purpose to create immersion. This implies that when using a representing medium you should be well-aware of what immersion is and how it can be stimulated with the user of the medium.

With regard to the above, many questions can be raised:

-      What is the difference between immersion due to a representation, and immersion without representation? (For example fantasy, day-dreaming etc.)

-      Can you also speak of immersion when the representation is complete and believed to be real by the immersive, not a representation?

-      How can it be, that if immersion is irrational, you are not going to act on it and help the character in the movie? Evidently, the believe in a representation has some limits.

-      Is it the case, that when a representation is more vivid, like in 3D movies as compared to books, that the immersion is stronger?

-      What if the representation includes things that are never present in reality (e.g. the Hulk or aliens), what does that part of the representation refer to? Apparently, not everything in the representation has to refer to something, or it can refer to more abstract concepts. How is it that immersion does occur in these cases?


Translated by Jelle Wien