At the Threshold of the Image : from Narcissus to Virtual Reality

This book explores the impacts of a desire that has motivated human beings since prehistory: the desire to enter an image. Over the centuries, every culture has tried to realize this wish with whatever visual resources were available at the time, and today's virtual reality technologies seem close to fulfilling it. The image in VR becomes an immersive 360-degree environment and the frame that used to confine it to a world apart disappears. Even the physical medium in which the image materializes appears to be transparent. However, once the border between the real world and the iconic world becomes permeable, we are faced with a troubling two-way passage: we penetrate the world of the image, but the image floods into our world. The desire for being encompassed by the image is accompanied by fear of this overflowing. In its analysis of this desire/fear, "At the Threshold of the Image" takes the reader on a journey from the myths of Narcissus and Pygmalion to contemporary VR headsets, passing through the pictorial traditions of trompe l'oeil and living sculptures, the mirrors in Alice in Wonderland, illusionistic architecture, panoramas and phantasmagorias, and 3D cinema.