Significance of Immersion, Participation, and Interactivity to New Media Art

Significance of Immersion, Participation, and Interactivity to New Media Art

Introduction

Just like any other sector, art has experience groundbreaking changes. As the consumer continues to take center stage in modern-day artistic ventures, artists and producers strive to understand and relate with the consumer. Immersion, participation, and interactivity have become essential tenets in the explanation of the relationship between artistic production and consumption in the new media art. While some scholars choose to use the pillars in combination, others prefer to separate them. Some authors have gone the way to alienating the posts. In this paper, the significance of immersion, participation, and interactivity get examined concerning art in new media.

One characteristic associated with interactivity is user awareness, as proposed by Boltrer and Grusin (1999). The authors further suggest that interactivity allows users to consist during immersion meaning the users are engaged in a partial manner, making them unaware of the medium. Other researchers have offered reconciliation between emersion and interactivity, citing the mentioned discrepancies as being design flaws suggesting a possibility of interactivity and immersion coexisting making content consumption fun and informative (Ryan, 2011 & Murray, 1997).

The use of computers, virtual reality, books, and cinema invokes the feel of involvement (Albæk, Arsovski,Baceviciute, Chu,Lancor & Zilmer, 2011). In the class, it got noted that interactivity get achieved through the utilization of computers.  Qualification of these emotions is still a grey area in the artistic world. While interactivity is dependent on technology entirely, immersion existed way before technology (Ryan, 2011). Interactivity ensures the availability of a channel to have a real-time exchange, presence, control, and timely feedback (Kwastek, 2013 p7.). Kwastek also note that works of art that involve the public without the use of technology termed as participatory or collaborative.

Pérez-Montoro (2018) concedes that interactive is vital in telling stories and also designing and creating an experience for active audiences. A significance of participation is that it allows the participants to contribute to content creation apart from interacting with the art.  Immersion as an artistic experience, can appear in digital media in varying capacities. Interactivity allows the presentation of media, development of user perception, and the unfolding of the interaction process (Downes & McMillan, 2002). Immersion is broadly divided into spatial and emotional (Zang et al. 2017). The first type of immersion is significant for allowing a media the system to isolate the users from their physical environment and give them a 360-degree virtual scene. The technique seems to build upon Baker’s 18^th-century panoramas and emerged in recent times as virtual reality. The technology provides the user’s sense of place and has been found to evoke a meaningful sense of empathy.  Another type of immersion strongly depends on interaction. In this case, communication is what generates the immersion and not heavy reliance on technology. The use of Virtual reality in rather traditional interactive models brings up a very new dimension to the discussion of interactivity and immersion. On conceptualizes that immersion takes precedence over the interactivity.

Conclusion

The discussion around Immersion, Participation, and Interactivity is a rich one spins very may years back. While immersion takes center stage with participation and interactivity exchanging places depending on the availability of technology. As technology advances, practical concepts that defy the theoretical framework are developed. Artists and producers need to keep revamping their user experience to keep the modern user engaged, entertained, and also allow them room for feedback.

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