MIT Press - Virtual Art: From Illusion to
Immersion (Leonardo Books).
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Virtual
Art: From Illusion to Immersion (
Leonardo Books). by
Oliver Grau ISBN:
0-262-07241-6, 416 Pages,
2003


Although
many people view virtual reality as a totally new phenomenon,
it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive
images. Indeed, the search for illusionary visual space can be
traced back to antiquity. In this book Oliver
Grau shows how virtual art fits
into the art history of illusion and immersion. He
describes the metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the
image and relates those concepts to interactive art, interface
design, agents, telepre-sence, and image evolution.
Grau retells art history as media history,
helping us to understand the phenomenon of virtual reality
beyond the hype.



Grau shows how each epoch used the technical
means available to produce maximum illusion. He discusses
frescoes such as those in the Villa dei
Misteri in Pompeii and the gardens of the
Villa Livia near
Primaporta,
Renaissance and
Baroque illusion spaces, and panoramas, which
were the most developed form of illusion achieved through
traditional methods of painting and the mass image medium
before film.


Through a detailed
analysis of perhaps the most important
German panorama, Anton von
Werner's 1883 The Battle of
Sedan, Grau shows how immersion
produced emotional responses. He traces immersive cinema
through Cinerama,
Sensorama, Expanded
Cinema, 3-D,
Omnimax and IMAX, and
the head mounted display with its military origins. He also
examines those characteristics of virtual reality that
distinguish it from earlier forms of illusionary art.



His analysis draws on the work of
contemporary artists and groups
ART+COM, Maurice Benayoun,
Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Ken Goldberg, Agnes
Hegedues, Eduardo Kac, Knowbotic Research, Laurent Mignonneau,
Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Paul Sermon,
Jeffrey Shaw, Karl Sims, Christa Sommerer, and
Wolfgang Strauss
Grau offers not just a history of
illusionary space but also a theoretical framework for
analyzing its phenomenologies, functions, and strategies
throughout history and into the future.



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