Signs of Immersion

“…the precondition for immersion is the transparency of the medium. But we live in a semiotic age, in an age that worships signs. Contemporary theories such as deconstruction teach us that the freedom of the mind must originate in a freedom from signs. So does virtual reality, in some respect, but while VR seeks this freedom in the disappearance of signs, contemporary cultural theories regard signs as the substance of all realities and as the prerequisite of thought. Freedom from signs cannot be achieved through their disappearance but only through the awareness of their omnipresence, as well as through the recognition of their conventional or arbitrary character.

The aesthetics of immersion is currently being replaced—primarily in “high culture” but the tendency is now stretching toward popular culture—by an aesthetics of textuality. Signs must be made visible for their role in the construction of reality to be recognized. A mode of communication that strives toward transparency of the medium bereaves the user of his critical faculties. The semiotic blindness caused by immersion is illustrated by an anecdote involving the XVIIIth century French philosopher Diderot. According to William Martin, “he tells us how he began reading Clarissa several times in order to learn something about Richardson’s techniques, but never succeeded in doing so because he became personally involved in the work, thus losing his critical consciousness” (Martin 58). According to Bolter, this loss of critical consciousness is the trademark of the VR experience: “But is it obvious that virtual reality cannot in itself sustain intellectual or cultural development. . . . The problem is that virtual reality, at least as it is now envisioned, is a medium of percepts rather than signs. It is virtual television” (230). “What is not appropriate is the absence of semiosis” (231).

— Marie-Laure Ryan “Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory” (1976)

Immersion relies on the interface’s ability to go unnoticed by the user , because to be fully present in the world they have entered they cannot be distracted by signs that indicate they are operating within that world from their original reality. These signs would remind the user of the artificiality of the entered world and shatter or prevent any immersive illusion that could have been achieved. As a result, there can be no such signs if the user’s mind is to be freed from reality in a virtual reality setting. However, while the mind in virtual reality relies on the disappearance of signs for freedom, it relies on the acceptance of them in reality. This contrast can be attributed to theories of the omnipresence of signs in human culture. If signs and their meanings are widely present in an uncontrollable reality, then they cannot be avoided or worked around like they could be in a constructed virtual reality. However, such a torrent of signs makes each sign weaker with the realisation that one alone is not likely to be hugely impactful, given the number of other signs influencing reality at the same time. Furthermore, by recognising that the meanings of signs themselves refer to other signs and the endless chain of co-dependency indicated by such referrals, the signified loses some of its importance as well. In this way, accepting and considering signs allows a person to achieve a similar freedom in reality to the one a user achieves in virtual reality when they are unaware of signs.

A trend of leaving immersion behind in favour of textuality, through the implementation of visible signs and mediums, was ongoing when Ryan wrote her article in 1976. This trend was driven by the belief that immersion collapses critical distance, making the experience less productive or efficient, and leading to Bolter’s argument that virtual reality cannot foster development. Textuality was a natural alternative to immersion, because it exploits a work’s medium, rather than hiding it. The way such purposeful exploitations lend themselves to critical interpretation would make it appealing to immersion critics like Bolter. However, the judgements he made may not be universally true, and raise the question of whether an immersive experience can be a successful critical one. Even if the answer to this is no, does that mean Bolter is right to say that immersive experiences have little to offer intellectually and culturally? Regardless, it seems the abandonment of immersion Ryan describes was not a permanent movement. Forty years later, digital culture and literature strive for immersion in many formats—from written texts catalysing experiences similar to that in the anecdote of Diderot, to greatly improved virtual reality technologies, and video games that induce immersion through realism in their audio, visuals, and controls.