A Thought on Immersion

Upon a recent visit to a friends house, I had the pleasure of gifting him with a token of my extreme affection for him, this being of course the cultural expectation at this time of year, but truly I simply find it to be a good practice to impose artificial limits on purchasing things for people you truly care for, else you may find yourself huddled in a box on the corner while your loved ones drown in the proof of your affectations.

Regardless, I purchased for him a video game which he had cause to believe he would enjoy. I then got to spend a few minutes watching him experience the first few bits of this game. His character (the smallish angry looking Irish man, naturally), began by riding in a Jeep, listening to the ramblings of a man in the front seat driving him to a destination I suppose was agreed upon prior to them entering the vehicle. My friend tilted the camera down and was suprised and elated to see the hands arms and body of the character he was portraying. At this point I was treated to a lecture on the merits of "Full-body-awareness" and the immersion that it provides. In fact his amazement was taken to the next level by finding that by pointing his head down and then attempting to turn the camera to look behind him his field of view was forced up and over his shoulder, the game detecting the shape of the body of the character and adjusting the physical limitations accordingly.

This sense of immersion was thrilling to my friend, and I'm sure I would have shared in the joy more if I had myself been playing and experiencing it. This occurance has lead me over the past few days to ask myself many questions regarding the nature of immersion, and how the concept affects my enjoyment of media.

To start on video games, them being the form of art (yeah, I went there) that started this line of thinking, I consider what indeed pulls me into a game. I personally am one who is cursed with the short attention span indicative and that perhaps is the defining characteristic of my gender-generation group. I will quickly find myself itching for something else to do whenever my mind is not occupied by enough tasks. I can rarely just fall asleep, but must distract myself with radio or television. Barring the availability of those things I will tell myself stories, or do math problems. When watching a movie I am generally also doing something mindless on the internet, or incessantly shuffling a deck of cards. In movie theaters I twitch my leg endlessly, my father in particular is frustrated by this, and often claims that it shakes the entire row of seats. The proof of my particular brand of attention issues detailed, one could imagine that a video game must have a signifigant amount of immersive qualities for me to be able to complete it succesfully, but this is where my tastes digress from those of my aforementioned friend.

He is immersed in a game by graphics, by the way the world is presented, this is not his only concerned, but he has admitted to being a bit of a "graphics whore". I on the other hand am immersed by the mechanics of a game. In the game that discussed earlier I was enamored by the way that save points had to be fought for and controlled, and discovering whether the light that blinked, indicating closeby hidden treasure, was orientation based or proximity based. That the particular mission that my friend was embarked upon was given to him by one NPC, but that directly after he was contacted by another NPC who commented on the quest given on a political level, building the overall lore of the story, and on a personal level, allowing chances for the player to involve himself in her personal story and invest himself in her character. Then she offered a quest based on the same in game event, but approaching it from a different angle with opposing goals. The game being based on the chronicling a conflict in a psuedo-reality of modern Africa, I found the fashion in which you were placed in the position of choosing between faction both fiercely epitomizing contrasting ideals but both exhibiting the same primal need to protect their own livelihood was enthralling and captivating.

In much the same way, books do not capture my by painting broad and beautiful images in my mind, perhaps because my mathematical/logistical brain struggles to appreciate the visuals arts. Instead I am drawn in by the interactions between characters, the portayl and commentary on reality or the authors version of it. How the ideas are phrased and the vocabulary used. I am instantly sold on a book that has wit not only in the story provided, but particularly in the syntax and structure of the words and phrases used. At this point I should be giving an example of this, but unfortunately this blog has not been well researched, perhaps this could become a venue for taking note of them for posterity and communal glee.

In movies I watch not so much the scenery depicted in the frame but the composition of the frame, how the positioning of the characters and objects in the scene add to and comment on the action taking place, how the colors worn by the actors exhibit traits in their character and what pieces in the set decorations have to say about the moral of the story.

In this same way I am not nearly as enamored with photography, I have attempted to be in the past, I have made efforts to both take photos and enjoy those of others, but I have been unable to fully immerse myself. Very much the same with painting and sculpture, however installation and urban art, particularly that which focuses on social commentary enthrall me. Perhaps this is a function of being unable to immerse in art that comments on a culture that predates my own and in which I have no involvement and investment, and very little knowledge, while being fascinated in that which comments on ideas that I experience daily and wrestle with philosophically.

So yes, this turned out to be much less a commentary on immersion in general, and a guidebook on how to produce media that enthralls me, which I am sure is not directly the goal of any that may be reading this. However, I believe to immerse myself in the blog of another I must be able to connect with that person on a more visceral level.

So perhaps this can be seen as an attempt to force the reader to be immersed in this blog.