INTO WORLDS. The Craft of Blurring Boundaries

The conference “INTO WORLDS” will explore three different areas of the immersive arts: physical techniques and crafts, spectacular entertainment formats, ranging from vertiginous funfair attractions to virtual reality, and spiritual mental practices between religious contemplation and meditative self-optimisation. Immersion is revealed to be an ambivalent movement. One the one hand, it stands for obliviousness of self or of the media, for spiritual exercise or ecstasy, but on the other, it gives cause for repudiation and critical reflection: Who creates these various worlds that we participate in daily? How are they created? And to what purpose? Which roles do we get caught up in and how do we contribute to forming these worlds? More information

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Programme

10:00 to 24:00
Notget
Virtual Reality Experience by Björk
Whitebubble
Sound installation with works by Frank Bretschneider, Julius Holtz, jayrope, Sven König, Richard Scott
For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Journey Into the Sonic History of Conflicts
Field Recordings by Samson Young
Clapping performances by OBJECTIVE SPECTACLE
Interventions by !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Video art by Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Trisha Baga, Jon Rafman and Jeremy Shaw from the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Dusseldorf/Berlin

11:00
take part
How do participation, interaction and immersion relate to each other?
Panel with Kyung-Ho Cha (literary researcher, Universität Bayreuth), Doris Kolesch (theatre researcher, Freie Universität Berlin) and Gloria Meynen (media theorist and art historian, Zeppelin-Universität Friedrichshafen)
Chair: Georg Döcker (theatre researcher, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen)
In German

11:00
program it
What dramaturgies do immersive productions follow?
Panel with John Bingham-Hall (co-director, Theatrum Mundi, London), Stefanie Diekmann (media culture researcher, Universität Hildesheim) and Claus Pias (media theoretician and historian, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
Chair: Andreas Wolfsteiner
In English

11:00
feel technology
What are the experiences and knowledge that arise in technically manipulated environments?
Panel with Inge Hinterwaldner (art historian, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), Enno Park (cyborg), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (molecular biologist and historian of science, Max-Planck Institut Berlin) and others
Chair: Bertolt Meyer (psychologist, Technische Universität Chemnitz)
In German

12:30
Lunch in the Lichthof

13:30
Immersion as Cultural Logic, Contemporary Film as Symptom
Keynote by Constance J. Balides (film researcher, Tulane University New Orleans)
In English with simultaneous translation into German

14:30
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Pop-up Event with !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo), Cornelius Puschke (dramaturg, Berlin), Christoph Knoth and Konrad Renner (designers, Knoth & Renner)
In German

14:30
The New Infinity
How can the fulldome digital technology of planetariums be used artistically?
Presentations by Marie-Kristin Meier (Programme Coordinator “The New Infinity”), Louis-Philippe St-Arnault (Société des Arts Technologiques, Montréal), Brook Cronin (Omnidome) and Benjamin Muzzin (media artist)
In English

15:30
How to Create a Virtual Reality Experience
Workshop with Sönke Kirchhof (INVR.SPACE)
In English

16:30
16 Hz
Organ concert performance by Adrian Gutzelnig

17:00
Gesellschaft der Singularitäten
Keynote by Andreas Reckwitz (sociologist and cultural researcher, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder)
In German with simultaneous translation into English

18:00
surveillance as immersion
What is the relationship between the contemporary forms of image-guided surveillance and immersion?
Face-to-Face with Markus Beckedahl (journalist & activist, Berlin) and Thomas Y. Levin (germanist, art and media theoretician, Princeton University)
Chair: Andreas Wolfsteiner
In German

18:00
go play
What and why are we training in board games, live action role-playing games and manoeuvres?
Face-to-Face with Markus Rautzenberg (philosopher, Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen) and Theresa Schütz (theatre researcher, SFB Affective Societies, Freie Universität Berlin)
Chair: Sebastian Quack
In German

18:00
Artist’s Talk with Jon Rafman (artist) and Norman M. Klein (cultural critic & media historian, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles)
In English

19:00
Uses of Immersion
Keynote by Jussi Holopainen (Computer Science & Games Computing, University of Lincoln, UK)
In English with simultaneous translation into German

20:00
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)
Live session by Claire Tolan

20:30
Keynote by David OReilly (artist & director, Los Angeles)
In English with simultaneous translation into German

21:30
CLAP.
Performance by OBJECTIVE SPECTACLE (Clementine Pohl and Christoph Wirth)

from 22:00
Ambient Live Set by Dasha Rush
Visuals: Malo Lacroix