Immersive and participative environments

Abstract

Immersive and participative environments in this text are spaces which use computing systems to promote a state of perceptive illusion and which incite the visitor to participation stimulating and impressing sensory perception through multimedia resources. In Erkki Huhtamo's (HUHTAMO 1995) examples of different immersion technologies that alter the mind, causing illusion, it is possible to distinguish technologies that induce to these perceptive states as internalized and externalized immersive experiences. Chemical drugs and religious rituals clearly induce to internalized experiences, while television, the cinema, virtual games and computing systems that create media scenarios, like immersive environments which can be acoustic or visual, offer the possibility of experiencing immersion collectively, in groups, as externalized experiences. The immersive and participative environments that I intend to analyze and compare are different from one another. The comparison aims to present the difference between the immersive apparatuses of the states of the south of Brazil: Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. Although they have different purposes and target audiences, all these spaces can be considered immersive media environments, which offer the experience as externalized immersion, which can be enjoyed collectively.