Theres are people that would say that art could not be immersive or tell stories however immersive experiences can often mean just making and surrounding the audience to feel involved in something (Cambridge Dictionary, 2020) which can be done in numerous ways and art since the beginning has always told us a story whether we chose to see the narrative or not is all on a person's perspective.
So, when it comes to the concept of immersive storytelling it can be done in many ways, one of these being storytelling through art. The main question of this concept is: Can art be immersive and tell stories?
To look into this I looked into what counts as as a story, there have been studies done that suggests that everything can be a story as we 'use narratives to make sense of our lives, to process information, and since we can tell stories about a game we have played, no genre or form can be outside the narrative.' (Juul, 2001) So, if we take this view into account we therefore can presume that still life art pieces such as paintings from Van Gogh or even digital art could have detailed narratives.
When we look at art we can visually see what the artist was trying to depict and eventually with the technology we could make art even more immersive. There are companies that have designed ways to further bring to life old and new art, such as being able to interact with Van Gogh's sunflowers or starry nights (Fever Labs Inc., n.d.).Thus allowing an interactive element to the art works.
Art has been one of the main visual ways that people have told stories throughout time and while there are no straightforward rules when it comes to converting high-level narrative functions, characters’ plans or structures (Cavazza, Charles and Mead, 2001). This allows the visual aspects from art to be prevalent for making meaningful connections for the person admiring it.
Now even though art can tell visual stories there have been leaps in how it can be transformed into interactive, immersive or animated storytelling. With technology being a constantly developing aspect of society the evolution of narrative and the way it is presented to the audience has become an ever changing concept from involving book narrative into film or game narratives into animations the industry has gained more and more ways to ignite stories that can both involve stylised artworks and immersion.
As human beings we have many different ways that we would engage with art or perceiving stories. Theories suggest that immersion can involve a range of aspects but on the most basic level, moving and illuminated imagery insistently solicits the observer’s gaze (Mondloch, 2013) which is a form of immersion that art or animation creates within their stories and environments. Within engaging storytelling worldbuilding or prolific, maybe even historical, contexts/backgrounds is can be a huge part of captivating an audience into a new creation, which is part of the reason why art pieces such as ‘The Execution of Lady Jane Grey’ (Delaroche, 2019) or the animation behind Arcane are beloved by many communities. However immersion can also come in the form of having virtual environments that reduce the observer to a disembodied state (Grau, Gutheinz and Custance, 2003) which leaves the consumer engaging with art or media in a completely different way.
Projection mapping making making art interactive
Projection mapping, although has been around since around the late 1960s, has become more advanced and popularised in the last decade particularly within the art community. As art has been around for a long time there has to be new ways to engage people in our ever changing immersive world.
Therefore, there are becoming a unique range of ways to immerse people in art, whether that would be us bringing classics to life to be interactive through projections where they can be fully engaged with making the art surround the people within the environment or brand new art pieces using the projectors to bring the vibrancy of pieces to life on walls, floors or other environments.
This concept of being able to immerse art has become more prevalent and projection mapping has been used through film, animation and art since projection technology could start portraying different mediums. Projection mapping is also capable of creating environmental animated storytelling where the animation is constructed around the environment in which the audience is in.
Animation creating a new form of storytelling
Animation is one of the ways that has brought art styles into a completely new form of storytelling, often the way that these pieces involve making art immersive through stories and worlds that will form a connection with the audience. Animation is known for forming brand new worlds that we simply could not portray easily in other mediums.
These worlds can start simply through storyboarding concepts that are made to bring an audience to be involved in the story and eventually are transformed into these stunning environments and tales of characters that the audience can admire or connect with.
Though these concepts are eventually turned into the expensive beloved stories that we see today they in themselves can immerse an audience as much as a videogame could by simply forming this bond with the audience by using character developments and having very stylised aspects to the pieces. Often this is done by using characters that the audience could already be familiar with such as Spiderman or Jinx, using environments that could enchant the consumer which is common with Studio Ghibli or even establish a relationship, possibly using emotion, with the audience in some form from the beginning of the animated piece.
Other animations that turn traditional styles into animations have often done this to form some form of nostalgia towards the targeted audience so that when presenting the story. This has also been done with the art style of video games where they play on people's emotions and nostalgia. A beautiful example of using art style to form a whole story would be the animation of: Into the Spiderverse.
Which could lead to the concept of doing animation within a Virtual world. Virtual Reality animation is yet another vessel for storytelling. However, the way VR author(s) creates a story to be shared and the audience to perceived in Virtual Reality leap us forward in terms of man machine interaction (Karnchanapayap, 2019).
Endless Paper creating zooming storylines (endlesspaper.app, n.d.)
One of the other ways that a story could be told through art would be using the concept of art within art itself. Artist have done this by using softwares like Endless Paper where the person interacting with a piece can interact with the piece and depending on how complex the artist has gone they could have multiple choices where the participant could zoom into the section they chose which could zoom into another art piece and the process continues creating this interactive storyline and these storylines could be completely different depending on what part of the piece you keep zooming into.
The artist Vaskange (Vaskange, 2022) is the most well known artist using this technique to interact with their viewers and create a story based on what they want to see, therefore creating this immersive plot that has directly involved the audience. They have been creating storytelling art using this effect allowing others to see their own worlds and even making a loop from beginning to zooming to end back to zooming into the original starting art piece.
Other artist that use this as a form as storytelling in their own style would be: JR jar.arts (Jars.Arts - JR, 2023), (Lizon, n.d.), (Martin, 2023), (Ogarno, n.d.), (Tyler, n.d.) which have all created their own stylised art and stories using this effect.
How Art can be the Whole Point of a Story:
Some art pieces and games rely on a specific stylise and the main story depends on the art choices. When art pieces and games rely on art styles it often demonstrates mood and atmosphere. They do this through colour and if they have characters it also is dependent on how they are portrayed.
Specific Case Study : Unpacking (Witch Beam, 2021)
Specific key theory: How art can be immersive?
Within the case study of Unpacking the style itself is a sweet game that you get to connect with a character through their everyday items when unboxing each of their moves. The style of the art is the main highlight of the game and even though you never interact with any actual characters you get immersed in this person's life through unpacking their life at different stages of their life.
How unpacking creates an interactive environment being a point and click video game with no visible characters, with the style of the art and the story is literally only told through everyday items that someone would have and the main point of the game is using the everyday concept of moving from place to place and it would not be as engaging if the art style of the game was not stylised the way it is.
Conclusion:
To conclude, this overall, in general ‘storytelling is as old as dirt. People have been making up stories since cave dwelling times. Our brains are wired to make connections and find narratives.' (Blazer, 2019) This is done within art throughout time and different mediums, art has gradually become more and more immersive in a range of ways from video games to projections. Art may not be seen as immersive to some but it definitely has the capacity to become a highly immersive product. However, despite this art unquestionably has been a medium to tell stories for centuries and it is most plausible to assume that art will continue to be a method of storytelling well into the future.
Refeneces:
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