The Magical Features of Immersive Audiovisual Environments

摘要

For centuries, artists, scientists, writers, designers, engineers, and others have explored audiovisual environments to create augmented realities and temporary autonomous spaces. The constant evolution of new media technologies provides the creators with better tools each day, allowing them to merge existing physical spaces with the virtual—the digital and imaginary ones. The magical features of these environments have been attracting humans since long before the advent of new media technologies. The need to understand the universe is a basic human trait, as is the more specific need to understand its rules so we can break them and create new worlds. Randall Packer and Ken Jordan write, "The fantasy of being transported into another world, to be taken wholly into the imaginary real, is a primal desire". This fantasy has existed from ancestral times, spanning civilizations and technologies. It is embedded in human consciousness and exists in a range of fields, from literature to science, visual art, and cinema.