Narrative Objects

Art-based research

SQ2: What qualifies art as immersive?

According to games research, there are four types of immersion: systemic, spatial, empathic, and narrative. Immersion is important in games and other narrative media because it allows the viewer/player to forget that there is a difference between the fictional reality and true reality. But games are not the only media which require us to perceive realities different from our own. In fact, that could be considered one purpose of art in general, to communicate a specific experience of reality. Therefore it seems logical to suggest that any artwork can be immersive, no matter the medium. As long as an art piece can create one or more of the four types of immersion, it is immersive.

With my goal as an artist being to educate and to heal, I am curious about the immersive nature of different creative media because I want my work to be as effective at communicating information as possible. In consuming years worth of art, I have noticed that, no matter how profound or emotional its depiction, static visual art does not usually immerse me in its meaning, i.e. generate knowledge or feelings, as clearly or as viscerally as narrative media. Perhaps clarity is not always the point of art, but this observation makes me wonder if it’s possible for an artwork which does not evolve — an object, an image, an installation — to generate the same sequence of anticipation, revelation, learning, and understanding that comes from experiencing a story. It’s like asking how to create an illusion of time where time doesn’t exist.

In this body of work I explore how supplementing static visual media with a poetic “script” can create immersion by engineering the art-viewing experience into a hybrid game-performance. As the viewer reads the script, which details a scene related to the artwork, they (hopefully) decipher instructions within the text about how to interact with and interpret the artwork, as well as how to interpret their own role as the actor in the performance of interaction. The artwork is like a set that has been designed for the viewer, and hence the viewer becomes key to the success of the artwork.

2023

“Performance of Little Windows”. Interactive sculpture. Inkjet print on canvas, pine, acrylic, polymer clay, polyester; 44.5” x 34.5” x 6”.

2022

“Honey / blob”. Interactive soft-sculpture and video. Cloth, thread, yarn, magnets, zipper, buttons, ink on paper. 10” x 6” x 4”. Duration: 3:11