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The Politics of Immersion

Kevin Davidson, Author

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Assimilation//A Simulation

The word “immersion” maintains a multitude of meanings and
sensory interpretations by which it could be understood and explained. Often,
these various understandings stand at philosophical opposition towards one
another. Does immersion simply conjure notions of a deeper, more fundamentally engaged form of media interaction? Is
it something more profound? Could it, for example, signify a more sophisticated
form of corporeal assimilation (from a technological standpoint)? Are those who become “immersed” still objectively human? And for that matter, is being objectively human a desirable trait in a
world in which more developed modes of digital interaction are becoming
increasingly available to the general population? I aim to explore what it
means to be technological immersed in an age of near constant development in the realm of virtual reality and immersive media systems, and the conflicting
ideologies in regards to these social and technological steps towards
posthumanist constructions.


"There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm." - Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History"

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