ArtTech

...my consciousness had wrapped itself around the work... my body absorbed the stone

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1621.
The Rape of Proserpina (Marble)
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Technology as Immersive: Body Surounds Media

To illustrate what I mean by this other kind of immersivity — body surrounding media, or body as ocean — I want to describe my encounter with Bernini's The Rape of Persephone, which is in the Galleria Borghese, in Rome.

I saw the sculpture in 2004 while in Italy on a working vacation. The museum's brochure said that it had been newly re-installed in its original 17th Century position, so that the viewer first catches sight of it from behind and to the left of Persephone. I remember being intrigued that this detail was so prominently stated, but having no knowledge of the work, I was unaware of its significance.

On entering the gallery the first thing I saw was the flesh of Persephone's thigh, held tight in Pluto's grasp, her skin yielding to the pressure of his fingers. From behind, the scene appeared passionate, and I thought maybe it represented a love story. (I wasn't up to speed with my Greek mythology, obviously.)

But as I walked around the sculpture I glimpsed the agony on Persephone's face, and then came face-to-face with the three-headed demon dog, Cerebus. Next, looking up, I took in the impact of Persephone's forearm smashing against Pluto's temple. Then, finally, on rounding the work completely, I grasped the trauma and horror of the scene.

I remember standing in the gallery, stupified, replaying my short trek across the floor, realizing the complexity of the narrative that I'd just encountered. Within the space of a dozen steps my body had surrounded and integrated the passion and terror of the story, viscerally, and completely without words. Wow, I remember thinking, that's immersive.

But immersive in a way that I'd never experienced before. Literally, my consciousness had wrapped itself around the work in order to understand it. And the experience was entirely contextual and situational, completely embedded in the time-space that contained both me and the work itself.

This kind of immersivity has very little to do with a willing suspension of disbelief. In this instance, for example, there is no escaping the experience that the body has already integrated; closing your eyes doesn't remove the fully modelled space and time that is already living inside you. Neither does this immersivity have anything to do, essentially, with computers or digital networks. Rather, here we are glimpsing a primordial characteristic of technology's relationship to the human body-as-consciousness.

This topic obviously needs more consideration. For me this kind of immersivity — body as ocean — pulls together ways of talking about technology that I've described previously (spectrum, thinking and feeling, choice, relationship), crucially re-emphasizing that this conversation is fundamentally about the deeply human desire for authentic experience, for the gesture that leaves its own trace.

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