Immersi nell’irreale. Prospettive an-iconiche sull’arte contemporanea dall’ambiente alla realtà virtuale

Thanks to its ability to envelop the viewer in a 360° image, Virtual Reality (VR) has stimulated the debate on the topic of immersion, and it has favoured research in genealogical terms to trace possible paths in the history of media and art. However, part of this narrative still evaluates VR as an illusion medium useful to mimetically reproducing reality, rather than as a great tool for design space. Indeed, we can recognize the most stimulating characteristics of this technology in designing a space and in the relationship established with the user’s body. In doing so, it is possible to identify in the artistic installations dating from the first decades of the XX century, a significant stage in the history of I'm mersive artworks. The history of such installations early shows that one can be immersed with her own body in an abstract and unreal space, which is not necessarily a duplicate of reality. The immersive strategies proposed by the environmental installations make use of a centrifugal force that pushes outwards from the canvas and the sculpture’s closed form. Still, at the same time, it provokes a centripetal movement of inclusion and absorption of the world within the image that thus becomes an environmental image. Precisely because of this attractive and inclusive force, and thanks to the gaze that we can cast towards the past from today, environmental installations can be read as images, or rather as an-icons ante-litteram.