Immersive new media landscape and the expanded visual field

Abstract

This research project considered the experience of immersion through the creation of monumental digital photographic prints of an exotic hybrid landscape - Le Vol. These monumental prints have been the central to this project. Ideas generated through this part of the research informed the development of two accompanying works, Flock, a mirrored box containing 3D scanned museum specimens, and Little Bird Big History a gallery of the individual birds that were photographed at key European Natural History Museums. This project has continued my research into the recreation of French Scenic wallpapers depicting mythic and historic themes. This project has focused on a reinterpretation of a specific wallpaper, Le Bresil, a lush exotic continuous landscape populated with birds from many continents. The birds included in Le Vol were photographed at the Vienna and La Rochelle Natural History Museums. Many were collected between the mid seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. The research for this project brought together key ideas and areas of enquiry that inform my practice. I discuss the importance of the natural environment and the museum as sites for research, scenic wallpapers as part of the history of immersive illusionistic space, and the perceptual experience of the panoramic installation, in particular the experience of visual slippage as the image falls out of sight, beyond peripheral view. Specific texts assisted me in unpacking these ideas. This included Lev Manovich's critique of new media aesthetic and the experience of between continuity and dissonance through both montage and compositing visual approaches, Clare Bishop's critique of modalities of installation practices, and Oliver Grau's survey of the history of the desire for illusory and immersive space. I also discuss the work of other artist who's work has informed this research project also, in particular, artists that utilize wallpaper in their work, and bring the domestic associations with wallpaper into the gallery context.