The Inside Story on Immersive Art
What is art anyways, and who gets to define it? It’s an age-old question that has been asked when artists such as El Greco, Caravaggio, Manet or Picasso have propelled the art world forward by creating a work of art that seems to have broken with the norms.
We seem to be having just such a moment as the art world struggles to define the latest trend in art, the Immersive Experience. This blend of technology, entertainment and yes, even consumerism, is making a big splash internationally and is poised to be off and running as a post-pandemic world stretches its legs and longs for new experiences. It also has traditional art purveyors, curators and critics asking that all consuming question, “Is this art?”
The ever-evolving art world
Immersive Experience Art, (IEA), is defined as art that exceeds any one viewer’s field of vision, is bigger than the viewer and often appeals to senses beyond simply sight. Most importantly, IEA dissolves the boundary between artwork and the viewer.
A recent visit to the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in Chicago confirmed this. Walking into a room was as if I was walking into a painting. The wheat fields of Van Gogh’s oeuvre were projected on the walls and floor and at times appeared to be blowing in the wind. I didn’t have to close my eyes to imagine what it was like to be with Van Gogh as he trudged through the fields of Auvers sur Oise,, France to find the perfect spot. I felt as if I had been transported there with my eyes wide open.
IEA at the TMA and beyond
In recent years TMA has brought Immersive Art to our doorstep. In 2018 we wandered through the flowers of Rebecca Law’s Community. In 2019 we silently communed with Yayoi Kusama’s Fireflies on the Water. Currently we walk into Gallery 5 and become a part of Anilya Agha’s Intersections when our shadows and the artwork’s shadows combine and intersect.
The cutting edge digital technology that is driving IEA forward can be discovered with a simple internet search. Find “Borderless Tokyo” on Youtube and you get an idea of why this wildly popular digital art museum created by teamLab, broke museum attendance records worldwide in 2018. Their first US installation, SuperBlue, is poised to open in Miami, FL. Closer to home, in Columbus, is Otherworld, a collaboration of 40+ artists who have created a storyscape of 47 rooms to explore and interact with. To experience IEA around the clock, the Asleep in the Cyclone exhibit in Louisville KY, blurs the lines even further by also being a hotel. One can book a room in which every single detail is created by the artists even down to the contents of a curiosity corner within the room. Van Gogh IEAs are all the rage right now and several shows are currently touring the country. And finally, the Newfields Museum in Indianapolis is the first museum in the country to dedicate permanent space to Virtual Art with the opening of their Lume Gallery in June of 2021.
The ever-evolving definition of art
Just as in the days of yore, these new directions in art have their critics. Some point towards their connection to big tech, marketing and entertainment. “It is art contaminated by creeping consumerism,” say the naysayers as they ask, “Is it art, or is it spectacle?”
Truth be told, IEA often is different. In the way it is created, experienced and financed, it blends the lines between the visual and performing arts. It is often created in a production studio and is sometimes made to interact, via sensors, with the movements of the viewer. It is ever changing, not static and often encourages the viewer to engage physically. Furthermore, IEA is rarely commissioned by a solo collector or institution, but rather supported through ticket sales, much like a concert or performance event.
Artists have pushed against the boundaries of convention throughout the ages. What caused outsized reactions centuries ago seem all so tame to today’s contemporary eye. Being immersed in a work of art and physically connecting to it seems so very avant garde when compared to a traditional gallery walkthrough, but for me, layering these ways to encounter art has made my experience all the richer.
In walking past TMA’s beloved Wheat Fields with Reaper and Houses of Auvers I feel all the more drawn into the paintings on the wall because of my experience with Immersive Van Gogh. I feel sensations, triggered by the memory of standing in a room, surrounded by images of these same wheat fields and houses. I am all the more likely to stop, to pause, to do some close looking and to marvel at what is simply hanging on the wall in front of me.
Sources:
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/immersive-art-1234580701/
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/teamlab-art-world-1234580691/
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/immersive-experiences
https://steemit.com/travel/@terrybogan/teamlab-borderless-tokyo-o7wpwqm4