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Virtual Art
From Illusion to Immersion
Oliver Grau
 Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
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, telepresence, 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.
About the Author
Oliver GRAU is Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies, Danube University Krems. He is the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (MIT Press, 2003), editor of Mediale Emotionen (2005) and founder of the pioneering international digital art archive www.virtualart.at.
| "Grau traces the lineage of virtual reality as far back as the frescoes of a villa in Pompeii."
—Scientific American "Oliver Grau has given us one of the more fascinating works this year."
—Guy Van Belle, European Photography "Highly original ..."
—Alison Abbott, Nature View All Reviews |
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| "Oliver Grau expands notions of immersion with a comprehensive overview of artistic meditations on illusion, presence and space. Using historical and innovative media-art project examples, he offers multiple perspectives on the evolution of our world-view. No doubt this volume will be a useful resource for any serious practitioner and/or theorist engaging the merging of art, science and technology."
—Victoria Vesna, Chair, Design and Media Arts, University of California, Los Angeles
"The highly ambitious task of locating the latest image technologies within a wider art-historical context has now been accomplished."
—Friedrich Kittler, Humboldt University, Berlin, and author of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
"Grau's Virtual Art opens the door onto a significant new approach to media analysis by focusing in depth on a particular kind of digital art—the attempt to create immersive environments. The combination of media archeology and careful analysis of both the possibilities and limitations of the impulse to put the viewer inside the artwork will make this book a valuable resource to both practitioners and theoreticians."
—Stephen Wilson, Professor of Conceptual and Information Arts, San Francisco State University, and author of Information Arts
View All Endorsements |
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| Winner in the 2003 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Competition in the Jackets category.
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