VIRTUAL ART: From Illusion to Immersion'  
by Oliver Grau

(forthcoming from MIT Press)


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Although many people view virtual and mixed realities as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundations in an unrecognized history of immersive images. The search for illusionary visual space can be traced back to antiquity. Oliver Grau shows how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and immersion and shows how each epoch used the technical means available to produce maximum illusion from Pompeiis Villa dei Misteri via baroque frescoes, panoramas, immersive cinema to the CAVE. 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 immersion beyond the hype.

Doing that, Grau draws on the work of contemporary artists like Maurice Benayoun, Charlotte Davies, Monika Fleischmann, Eduardo Kac, Christa Sommerer, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Daniela Plewe, Jeffrey Shaw et al.

Oliver Grau is lecturer in Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin, and head of the German Science Foundation's project on "Immersive Art". He is creating the International Database of Virtual Art with the aid of the Federal Ministry of Education and Science. Grau is visiting professor in Linz.