A Theory on the Ontology of Site-Reliant Immersive Environments

Abstract

The research sets an ontological and topological perspective regarding the formation and operation of immersive experiences and sees the latter as more-than-visual localised events that become rather than mere phenomena of appearance. It marks a shared vocabulary between art and architecture regarding the creation of space and frames a new art practice fundamentally architecturalised. This larval practice is ontologically constituted by immersive experiences, which occur as temporal events within actual architectural settings; places. The investigation expands the concept of immersion beyond the digitally constructed reality and sees the virtual as a complementary element of the actual for the formation of the real. The research attempts to establish a modality of an immersive spatial experience that is sensory, multiple as well as intimate, in topological and empirical terms with particular reference to the philosophy of the event and the complex spatial theories of Gilles Deleuze. In practice paper examines the poetics of specific artistic environments as immersive events that play the role of reflective case studies and seeks to establish that spatial art creation exists embedded and fed by the lived every day encounters, disrupting our actions generated by habit.