Immersion – new media and old ambitions

As immersive exhibitions and entertainments have become fashionable, it should be remembered that they have a long history, stretching back to the panoramas of the 18th century and the many optical novelties of the Victorian era, leading up to cinema and subsequent attempts to make this a more immersive experience. More recently, the concepts of cyberspace and the metaverse have been imported from science fiction to describe virtual experiences now available through digital media. Remediation theory should explain these, as well as their evident popularity, yet cultural and aesthetic hostility to such spatial illusions is almost as old as the new media themselves, and has reappeared in response to immersive exhibitions.