Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 5 Number 3, December 2004

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Grau, Oliver.  Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion.  Trans. Gloria Custance.  Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003.  416 pages.  ISBN: 0-262-072416.  £29.95 (Hardback)

Reviewed by

Roger Dawkins

University of New South Wales, Australia 

            In Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau’s main aim is to explore what he describes as illusion in art.  For Grau, illusion occurs when an artistic text functions to collapse the spatial distance between the observer and the art work itself.  Grau gives us several examples of illusory art from throughout the ages (early Roman frescoes, eighteenth century panoramas, cinema, and Virtual Reality [VR] installations), and one of the main points he makes is that the computer-generated virtual art of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, as an illusory art, is not revolutionary or new, but fits into a tradition of illusion that dates back as far as 60 BC.  He also spends some detail looking at the different technologies involved in removing the boundary between observer and art work, and these include the use of faux terrain in painting, the 360⁰ surface of the panorama, the curved screen of Imax, and the Head Mounted Display (HMD) of VR.  Grau’s analysis is unsatisfying when it comes to his discussion of the aesthetic effect of illusion.  Generally, he says that illusory texts result in the immersion of the observer into the environment of the work.  Yet he is never entirely clear about the implications of immersion.  And neither does he use his examples to sort this ambiguity out.  As a result, the reader is left a bit confused about the point exactly of illusion in art. 

            It is in his introduction that Grau states his aims and attempts to flesh out his concepts.  Grau claims that he will create “a coherent theoretical framework” for the analysis of illusory image spaces in art, that he will “take stock, in a clear and level way” of the different kinds of illusory spaces throughout art history (11)—in Grau’s words, to pursue “a science of the image” which up until now has yet to be undertaken.  But he’s not clear enough in his introduction about the concepts he’s about to develop.  He never really defines illusion for us, and chops and changes between his understanding of immersion as 1) an effect typically involving “diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement in what is happening” and 2) “an intellectually stimulating process” (13).  Furthermore, he often uses these two concepts in tandem, and seemingly interchangeably—adding more ambiguity to his terminology.  And in so far as Grau claims to writing a new and original “science” of the image, he spends a considerable amount of words noting his inspiration from previous thinkers, like Jonathan Crary, Roland Barthes, Roy Ascott and Myron Krueger, but he doesn’t identify how his own study is different.  Some time spent summarizing the field of research would not only legitimize Grau’s claim to the groundbreaking nature of his work but would also help the reader understand his own concepts better. 

In the second chapter Grau begins looking at various historical spaces of illusion.  He notes a history of illusory images dating back as far as the frescoes of classical art to the panorama in the 1800s.  At the beginning of the chapter Grau focuses on the paintings of the classical period, and how it was common in this period for a scene to be rendered on each of the four walls of a room.  In some very interesting pages Grau argues how these kinds of wall paintings are constitutive of spaces of illusion because the images are not experienced in succession, but as part of a “spatial and temporal unity” (27).  Then, in the Renaissance period, Grau notes the impact of perspective on painting.  Employed as a stylistic device in frescoes, Grau claims that perspective was most efficient in eliminating the distance between observer and observed (40).  Grau continues, describing the use of the ceiling in spaces of illusion (46) and the birth of the panorama as the mass art of illusion in modernity.  In some fine pages Grau goes into considerable detail concerning the construction of panoramas, the controversy surrounding them, and their economic significance.

Each of these examples raise interesting questions about the aesthetic implications of illusion in art.  Grau claims that every example of illusion results in the observer’s immersion into the space of the image, but the understanding of immersion he puts forward wavers: at one point he claims that immersion involves a heightening of the observer’s emotional sensibilities (44)—in other words, immersion involves a collapse in critical distance between observer and art work (the effect is “impressionistic”) (45); or, he says that immersion enables the observer to project their fantasies and visions into their experience of an art work (64); and finally, describing the effect of the ceiling fresco (Andrea Pozzo’s The Nave of Sant’Ignazio [1688-1694] in Rome), Grau claims that immersion leads to the observer’s critical detachment and considered response to the work.  Grau doesn’t flesh these claims out in enough detail (explaining their difference), nor does he attempt to unify these differences into a central argument about the aesthetic implications of illusion.  Then, at the end of the chapter, rather than positioning the reader by rounding his discussion up, Grau simply stops dead in his tracks. 

The remainder of the book follows in much the same way: Grau notes various “image spaces” of illusion throughout history, but doesn’t use these examples to really interrogate what illusion means.  In the third chapter Grau presents a detailed case-study of Anton von Werner’s panorama, The Battle of Sedan (1883).  He goes into fascinating detail about the process involved in the panorama’s creation and political objectives, but Grau’s argument about immersion is quite muddy and ambiguous (108).  In the fourth chapter he looks at the impact of the panorama on various media forms of the twentieth century, including: cinema, Cinéorama, 3D film, Imax, and the use of HMD in early computer generated virtual reality of the 1960s.  Grau notes how, with these new technologies, the formal elements of illusory texts have changed, but he doesn’t make clear from the outset of the chapter, or throughout his discussion, how these examples contribute to the ideas on immersion he has developed so far. 

            In the fifth chapter Grau looks at Charlotte Davies’ VR installation Osmose (1995).  He is effective in using this example to demonstrate the impact of technological innovations on the creation of illusory spaces. Grau describes how, through HMD and a vest filled with sensors, the observer experiences “full-body immersion in the visual environment” (198).  Davies’ installation is significant in an art history of illusion because it incorporates what Grau calls an almost invisible “natural interface” between user and text.  But the significance of this innovation gets lost in the reader’s confusion about the nature the observer’s aesthetic experience.  In the space of three pages Grau describes the effect of the illusion as a kind of “meditative absorption” (199); then he says that Osmose is “mind-expanding” and “mind-assailing” (200); then he says that Osmose eradicates the observer’s ability to be “critically detached” from their experience (201).  There is an ambiguity of concepts here that prevents the reader from really engaging with the book. 

            This ambiguity continues in chapter six when Grau begins analyzing more examples without setting up at the outset of the chapter why he’s looking at these examples and what they will contribute his discussion.  He describes Knowbotic Research’s installation, Dialogue with the Knowbotic South (1994-1997), and appears to settle on the argument that this art work is not concerned with collapsing the critical distance between observer and work.  But then he states that a certain “suggestive effect” still remains in this work (216).  Grau seems to be proving a point that he doesn’t really explain: that there is more to immersion than either passive absorption or intellectual stimulation. 

It becomes clearer later in chapter six that Grau is attempting to unpack works that use illusion to actively engage the observer (217), but the reader still isn’t sure about what this involves.  Part of the problem is that Grau’s language is a bit opaque and rhetorical.  For example, he describes intellectual stimulation in terms an expansion of the observer’s “self-image” (235).  He also says that it leads to a new emphasis on “the body and its materiality” by integrating “its dynamics into virtual action spaces” (245), that it enhances the “awareness of one’s own body” (247).  What is an expansion of one’s self-image?  What does it mean to enhance the awareness of one’s own body, and how is this different from the “impressionistic effect” Grau previously described? 

            In chapter seven Grau seems unsure of the relevance of the example that he discusses, and as a result some of the interesting points he raises aren’t given the attention they deserve.  The focus of this chapter is “telepresence,” an area of digital art concerned with the reception and interaction of art works over large distances (271).  One of Grau’s case studies is Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden (1995): a miniature garden watered by the arm of a robot fitted with a Web cam controlled by users of the Web (272).  Grau claims, however, that this work is “not concerned with putting users in an immersive environment” (274).  Why, then, does Grau discuss it at all?  Grau doesn’t answer this question, but there are a spattering of interesting points throughout the chapter.  He goes on to suggest that in examples like Telegarden, touch and other senses are experienced in different ways (275).  It seems that Grau’s returning to his argument about the effect of art on the observer’s self-image, but he doesn’t make this point clear.  Grau doesn’t forge any links with his previous examples, and so in the end the point he (almost) makes end up getting a bit lost. 

            Grau seems to lose his way a bit in chapter eight too.  His focus is interactivity in evolutionary art, or Genetic Art.  He looks at various examples whereby observers, in interacting with an art work either in person or virtually via the Web, help determine the outcome of simulated life processes.  For example, in Christa Sommerer’s and Laurent Mignonneau’s interactive digital art work A-Volve (1994), Grau explains how a group of observers exercise control over the life-cycle of computer generated “creatures” (300).  He explains how the users become emotionally involved with the creatures depicted, and based on this emotional involvement, he claims that the users are immersed in the virtual world of the creatures.  But at the same time, Grau states that the users are critically detached from the work, for it is based on this critical detachment that the virtual creatures are able to be controlled in the first place (306).  Grau is suggesting, then, that immersion is paradoxical because the user is emotionally involved (in the same sense Grau described the effect of the panorama), but at the same time necessarily detached, for without this detachment the illusion would not work.  This is an interesting point that really seems to add something to Grau’s discussion of immersion, especially since Genetic Art marks the culmination of his art-historical analysis.  Again though, Grau doesn’t relate the above paradox to an overall argument about immersion.  It appears in chapter eight more as an interesting aside, parenthetically.  Grau doesn’t even return to at the end of the chapter.

            Grau’s final chapter, “Perspectives,” almost serves as a conclusion to his study.  He is quite clear about his point that VR fits into an art history of illusion and is not a “revolutionary innovation” (330).  Also, he recapitulates some other points that have been salient throughout the study: that the effect of an art work’s illusion is relative to the observer’s “media competence,” and that the techniques of illusion have evolved with technology (341).  He doesn’t, however, clear up any murkiness about his analysis of immersion.  Grau is quite assertive at the beginning of the chapter that “immersive art” works “specifically against distanced and critical reflection” (339), but he seems to forget all the moments throughout the study that he suggested otherwise.  Things become even more ambiguous when he describes the effect of immersion according to a confusing blend of both passive absorption and critical engagement.  For example, he says the following about Davies’ work: “So suggestive, so sensual, and so winning are her highly immersive works, they produce a place for contemplation that is at the same time all embracing in its coercion” (347).  Finally, Grau rounds up his discussion by restating how important the concepts of illusion and immersion are for all areas of image discourse, even film studies.  For instance he writes that it would be “most helpful to investigate the neglected topics of filmic attempts at immersion, which are part of endeavours to extend or overcome the constraints of the film screen” (348).  Isn’t Grau familiar with Christian Metz’s pioneering psychoanalytic work on the cinema?[1]  This is an unfortunate remark on which to end because it puts another chink in the arguments of the book as a whole.

            In sum, I think Grau does a good job tracing a concept of illusion in art works that attempt to engage the observer in the space of the image.  He doesn’t, however, spend enough time developing a consistent argument about his understanding of immersion.  This would have involved a little more structure in his exposition, and perhaps, a little more philosophy in his approach to aesthetics.