Some works of contemporary art sometimes give us disturbing, strange, immersive emotions, without offering any object to see or feel. These are devices that disorient and decondition the viewer’s habits. Among them we can notice the installation Blind Light by Antony Gormley (2007), which leads our perception to new sensory discoveries (1).

By excluding the art object, the artist’s artificial fog paradoxically broadens our sensory experience. When the view is detached from a context, this experience of tenuity allows us to discern sensations and appreciate nuances. By paying attention to the almost imperceptible, our sensory stimuli achieve what Marianne Massin called “maximum aesthetic acuity” (2). Here, the aesthetic experience is not measured in terms of quantity of aesthetic qualities, but in terms of intensity which embodies the internal power of differentiation of the sensible. This state of exploration of the elusive also refers to the infrathin, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp, who was in search of the extreme limits of things. The question that arises is whether we are able to measure the intensity or refinement of this renewed aesthetic experience. How can the effect of the immersive immateriality of a work be manifested?
To shed light on the aesthetic experience that is both strong and imperceptible, we must ask ourselves about the forms and characteristic features of this intense dimension. In this regard, my talk will revolve around the qualities that are part of the imperceptible. These are the disappointment of the spectator’s expectations, the heightened attention, the meditative state and the hallucinatory experience as an effect of going beyond limits. In this sense, I aim to develop the aesthetic value of works that oppose any classical judgment on the descriptive qualities of the art object. Finally, I will insist on the fact that the “immersive” aesthetic concept is a hyper-aesthetic concept that is not based on non-aesthetic features, but on hyper-aesthetic qualities, belonging to extreme sensations (3).

The infrathin, a benchmark towards the imperceptible

Architecture is meant to represent a safe place that gives certainty of where you are. It is supposed to protect you from bad weather, from darkness, from uncertainty. Blind Light destabilizes all of this. You enter into this inner space which is the equivalent of being on top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea. It is very important to me that inside you find the outside. Also, you become a figure immersed in an endless terrain, literally the subject of the work. Antony GORMLEY (4).

Blind Light is ahead of us. We see a large cube filled with a damp, cold vapor. We don’t see if the cube is indeed emptied of any object, but we do see the shadows of the spectators who enter it disappear. We decide to enter inside a work: to dive, to immerse, to penetrate, to sink… What awaits us in this unknown dimension? Pleasure? The fear ? Wonder?
We enter. We advance without seeing anything at more than 30 cm. We only see the tip of our nose. We lose all bearings. We are cold. We are confused and alone. We wander looking for the exit. We are uncomfortable. By walking with our hands forward, we become acutely aware of our body and our vulnerability. It is an experience that oppresses our sensation.
Gormley loves bodies. He tries to show that the body is the thing more than an object. The body is our most precious asset. When we remain still we can gradually discover the benefits of the inner journey. To appreciate its true value, we must “close our eyes and meet the energy, the imagination, the potential that is inside us” (5). It is for this reason that Gormley cancels the final form of Blind Light. It inaugurates the pictorial immateriality that conditions our relationship to time and space. Gormley leads the viewer towards an infinite sensitivity since, in the void, there remains only the need to make a form exist in a specific space. In this case, the fog allows Gormley to charge any space with infinite pictorial sensitivity. Gormley’s fog constitutes the tiny dust of small perceptions that the spectator discerns, grasps, creates by discovering. Nothing is there, but everything is there. When the spectator enters it, he makes the void out of the ordinary and this singularization of the sensitive state produces a difference, an infrathin gesture.
The infrathin, a notion that Thierry Davila borrows from Marcel Duchamp, is “what is barely perceptible, barely identifiable, what represents a tiny and singularizing difference” (6). An infrathin space is a limited area towards which the artist leads us to reconsider our perception. The disconcerting sensation presupposes an infrathin gesture in order to see better and grasp better. This is called the logic of double gaze. By clinging to the lack of visibility of the works, we play the role of investigator of the imperceptible. We can no longer see, and yet we see. Extreme thinness turns into an event for the senses. Seeking the infrathin is therefore diving into the exploration of nuances and updating the things that remain elusive.
Yet, is it possible to grasp the elusive? How to grasp the difference of almost invisible thicknesses which is unique each time? For Duchamp, the infrathin is something that escapes our scientific definitions (7). By being affective, infrathin events always manifest themselves in continuous variation and adjustment. It is exactly for this reason that Duchamp builds his concept from the word “thin”, which is a human word, and is not a laboratory object. The infrathin refers us each time to singular phenomena which reveal sensory crystallizations. To analyze the infra-thin, we can proceed on a case-by-case basis by formalizing the conditions for the reception of spectators. It is not a question of making the “immersive” aesthetic concept exactly describable and apprehensible. It is a question of elaborating the conditions of the aesthetic experience which make possible this immersion in the disappearing work. Here, I take up Sibley’s notion that there is no rule in the application of an aesthetic term (8). The aesthetic concept is everything that comes under evaluation: elegant, graceful, fragile, harmonious. If we talk about the application of the term aesthetic, we must talk about the rules. There is no application without application rules. The application of the term aesthetic therefore depends on non-aesthetic traits such as red, tall, curved etc., but the relationship between the two is established by taste. In other words, non-aesthetic features are necessary conditions for the application of aesthetic terms, although they are not sufficient. In the case of Blind Light, we cannot apply the aesthetic category of “immersive” to a material something, because there is nothing in Gormley’s fog. Nothing is visible, but there is just an appearance of infrathin events on which we can relate the “immersive” concept.

An event #1: the disappointment of expectations

In front of the only narrow entrance to this cube, a lady holds up a sign “Asthmatics, cardiac, claustrophobic, etc… please abstain. (9)

Blind Light challenges our sensory habits. The field of vision is reduced to a few centimeters. Space vanishes. The right, the left, the back, the front no longer exist and time slows down. There is no art object in front of us to contemplate it. We ourselves are inside a work of art. We are part of the extension of this work. This is a frustrating and upsetting dimension. We cannot distinguish the real from the imaginary, the object from the abstract, the truth from the lie. We are disappointed. We are disappointed with our first visual capture. We are also disappointed with our tactile grip, since we are unable to find the exit by walking along the walls.
This disappointment of expectation forces us to rethink the faculty of feeling. Such an experience leads to questioning the conditions of possibility of the spatio-temporal forms of our identity. To bear witness to imperceptible art, we start from disappointment, to go to a reflection on the experience. We leave the artistic space to move towards the extension of the aesthetic experience. This is the reason why speaking of Duchamp’s ready-made is never to avoid a distinction without depth (10). Devoid of any expected aesthetic quality, the ready-made evokes an indifferent gap through the brutalization of the expectations of aesthetic contemplation. This is the anesthesia of the subject which results in hypersthesic vigilance. The ready-made should not be looked at, because the status of this shade of the infrathin is to exist without being insistent or marked. Consequently, the truth of the invention of the ready-made is to be there without our noticing its presence. It is there, basically, “destined to be singular to the point of invisibility” (11).
On this point, Marianne Massin emphasizes that the disappointment of expectation does not prohibit aesthetic experience (12). It involves the enrichment of the space-time of the dematerialized artistic proposal that challenges our traditional aesthetic habits. In this sense, the frustrating experience of anesthesia pushes itself back by the limits of the perceptible. Through this subtraction, the artistic proposal opens up in the tenuousness of sensation. By releasing a dimension of the infra-thin, the aesthetic experience does not move towards a conclusion, but is renewed by an awareness of aesthesia. At this point, the development of aesthetic experience takes its “reflective, interrogative and open” form (13). Massin then insists on the accentuation of the deceptive which reformulates the characteristics of the aesthetic experience in order to refine them. This invites us to dive into the reflexive redoubling that I will underline in the next chapter.

An event #2: heightened attention

Something is happening, something is happening… (14)

Since its introduction in 2002, Olaful Eliasson’s 360° Room for All Colors installation has offered its audience a panoramic immersion in fields of vivid chromatic illumination (15). The room is structured as a circular ceilingless pavilion that visitors enter through a portal, and is located within a more spacious gallery. Its inner surface is covered with hundreds of fluorescent lights, fixed behind an opaque sheet of white plastic that diffuses the light and distributes it evenly throughout the space. The surface is directed by a computer program that coordinates the lights as they change from one color to another. A feeling of collective ecstasy animates the gathered crowds, as they anticipate the almost tactile shift from one intensity of nuance to another and soak up the warmth of the electric lights. The effect on the eyes akin to being overthrown by color, being absorbed by each shade, so to speak, delirious. This effect grants access to a somatic knowledge of each as they exist in an artificially augmented state likely not found elsewhere.
From this perspective, we see that the immersive experience is always accompanied by an extreme intensification of the sensitive. This intensification provokes the attention of the subject, who seizes what the sensitive solicits. He feels his presence. He captures his reinforcement. He contemplates his transformation. In this sense, the sensitive of the subject is present as an elusive object of aesthetic experience. Unlike the aesthetic experience of art objects, the aesthetic experience of immersive installations is therefore sensitive events intensified by unusual conditions. By diving into an immersive work, the viewer becomes a work himself, as he brings his attention to what is happening with him in a misty cube. Consequently, we end up with a paradoxical situation in which the viewer vanishes into an immersive work, becoming a sensory and interactive device. At the same time, he remains the spectator since he is the one who judges his aesthetic experience. It is he who sees by seeing, listens by listening, contemplates by contemplating. Now, Gormley foresees this double gaze of the spectator. At the same time, by being outside a work, the spectator sees the shadows that run along the walls of a glass cube. At the same time, the spectator takes on the role of an active participant when his body is placed inside an installation.
When the spectator finds himself engaged in the process of experimentation, his attention to the singularity of the sensitive is heightened. He interprets the meaning of his personal experience by accessing a reflexive awareness of the body. In this regard, we access, as Marianne Massin says, “the fruitful space of an interrogation on the conditions of possibility of the experience itself” (16). We experience, in the negative, the new possibilities of our perception. We oscillate between the sensitive and self-reflection. The deepening of the perceptual experience is therefore based on this reflexive duplication through a rich palette of sensory experiences. It is a reflective aisthesis, or the experience of the experience where we are in the test of our sensory capacities. Consequently, this vacillation of the viewer’s perceptual limits contributes to the renewal of the aesthetic experience in immersive spaces.

Event #3: meditation

Accepting this haze, allowing the senses to adapt and experience what is offered differently. (17)

Apart from heightened attention, immersion involves the intensification of meditative capacities. The exhibitions that have become environments lead the viewer to interpret their new world and establish a relationship with it. The spectator wants to know what he is doing there, who he is or what he can do. By being immersed, we want to become fully aware of the present moment. It is an inner vigilance that opens us to meditation. By being detached from space and time in immersion, we want to detach ourselves from thoughts and emotions to simply be in the state of Being. To meditate means to have a pure experience. It is a state in which we are a silent witness who acquires the natural ability to know what really corresponds to our own nature.
As we approach Blind Light, our thoughts race through our minds. They clash relentlessly. Our mind is buzzing. In other words, we are lost and absorbed in our ideas, emotions and memories. A moment later, we are in the fog. By being in immersion, we take a step back from all these thoughts. Our concentration allows us to be more present and to lift the veils. This is not without a double paradox. On the one hand, we see nothing. We are lost in the device of immersion. On the other hand, we return to our own natural state. We free ourselves from the domination of our thoughts and feelings. As we dive into Blind Light, we dive into themselves to scan our own path. We enter it by entering. In this sense, there is a double immersion of the spectator’s experience: immersion in a device and immersion inside his mental state.
Meditation in immersion is close to a mystical or religious experience, accompanied by an intellectual and moral elevation. It is a feeling of union with God or the universe in a state of enlightenment (18). This state gives the impression of seeing things more clearly. For example, the spectator can have a feeling of well-being in the present moment, even of immortality. Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project evokes the same mystical feeling when one is immersed in a mist hiding a large artificial sun and giving it a halo of mystery. This achievement is amazing. Behind a semi-circular screen 14 meters in diameter, 200 mono-frequency bulbs illuminate the hall plunged into darkness. The spectator is simply astonished by contemplating a sun imprisoned in the immense “spiritual temple” (19). The artificial fog adds to the ambiguity of this microclimate itself controlled and catalyzed by atmospheric pressures. In this somewhat gloomy glow, the experience of the sun gives us the sensation of the end of the world or of another space-time where we seek silent and opaque beauty.
According to testimonials from its visitors, The Weather Project also renews energy levels through its interactive element (20). You can lay there staring at the mirrored ceiling and see friends doing synchronized movements, couples kissing, children waving. Sometimes you can find complete strangers interacting with each other across the room. It warms the heart to witness such a scene. You really feel alive when you’re lying there, and in a way it restores your faith in human goodness and your ability to get along, across the usual boundaries like race, nationality, class, etc.
I remember one day a bike ride in the wild forest. The tall trees hung over me as if I were immersed in a sublime space. The sunlight through the branches imposed a feeling of happiness and union with nature. Even though my vision was blurred by the glare, the forest and I were one. This spiritual connection inspired me that I was the lord of all this wooded space. I was god of the forest.

An event #4: the hallucinatory experience

…I was wandering all alone, walking my wound
Along the pond, among the willow grove
Where the hazy haze evoked a great
milky ghost despairing
And crying with the voice of teals… Paul VERLAINE, Poèmes saturniens (1866).

The hallucinatory experience in the immersive space proceeds from the violent intensity of perception. In the visual form, the hallucination may manifest due to suppression or disorientation of vision. For example, Serendipity by Ann Veronica Janssens provokes this disruption of perception by projecting light onto the screen in flashes and blinks (21). The effects of color saturation and glare are close to what it feels like to be drugged, without taking a substance. Another installation of Janssens Donut can even cause hallucinatory dizziness by the blinking eye on the wall at regular intervals (22). This work addresses the loss of control and the absence of fixed materiality through the sensory experience that challenges cognitive reflexes.
Certain spaces of immersion can also give the viewer the illusion of receiving bad information from an external object. In Olafur Eliasson’s installation Weather Project, the impression is given that the incredible sun brings warmth and softness, while the disc does not generate any real heat (23). Feeling comfortable, spectators lie down on the cold, hard floor. To a large extent, this warm feeling of relaxation relies on the soft yellow lighting resembling the effect of light produced by a candle. Similarly, Blind Light allows the viewer to see the illusory shadows in a thick fog. These are not crazy hallucinations brought on by sensory deprivation, since Blind Light does not completely suppress the sensations. We can still perceive the steam generated by the ultrasonic humidifiers, feel the humidity and even see the showroom outside when approaching the glass wall (24). Yet Gormley’s fog creates a possibility for the imagination. Disoriented senses shift to accommodate better and can form whole images from partial images.
Another level of illusion refers to metaphorical and non-corporeal immersion. In his installation Chott el-Djerid, Bill Viola wants to immerse us in the landscape that illustrates the mirages and distortions caused by the heat of the desert. The recording shows trees, sand dunes and buildings merging into a shapeless mass. For Viola, these effects represent hallucinations of the landscape (25). It follows that being in the middle of the desert, one finds oneself in someone else’s dream. The real and the imaginary are indistinguishable since they reflect each other. In this regard, the viewer must decipher this ambiguous reality by entering the spaces of the artist. It becomes an extension of the landscape and exposes itself to dissolution. To better grasp the fragile and uncertain appearances, the spectator goes beyond the visible. It redefines the images which themselves are renewed at every moment. In Viola’s device, there is therefore a double transgression. It is about provoking the experience of excess through the same experience of going beyond the limits of human perception. In other words, the viewer immerses in the perception of individuals who are themselves absorbed by the desert of Chott.

Conclusion

The immersive environments of contemporary art seek to provide the visitor with a reflective experience allowing an awareness of the body and its anchoring in space and time. It is not about the experience in front of an art object, but in the testing of the perceptual capacities of the spectator. Immersion refers to an experience of strong intensity which is characterized by the testimony of a new perceptual paradigm. The disappointment of expectation leads the spectator from one state to another by provoking the discernment of our faculties of sensitivity, imagination, memory, knowledge. The exacerbated attention solicits the infrathin gesture by updating new possibilities. In this case, we are experiencing in the experience since we grasp the imperceptible appearances while being immersed in the diffuse forms. For example, to see by seeing the fog of Blind Light means to grasp the transformation of perception, to locate the limits of the senses, to sensitively access a reflexive awareness of the body. The immersion of contemporary art is also an art of hyperesthesia which refers to the experience of dazzle, saturation, exhaustion, excitement. These effects can provide hallucinatory events comparable to those produced by taking the hallucinogenic substance. It is also the sensory arousal associated with mystical or religious feelings that engender a sense of ecstasy with the world. It must be assumed that immersive devices differ in size, technical characteristics and, consequently, in the effects and levels of immersion. It is therefore possible that the four events I described above do not fully appear in the aesthetic experience of visitors to other immersive installations. The idea of my research was to show how we can measure the intensity of this immersive experience to make a comparative classification of contemporary works of art according to an “immersive” aesthetic trait.
The temporality of an immersive work is therefore based on taking shape of imperceptible phenomena (26). In this sense, by being in a relationship where the important thing is not the object, nor the one who produces it, but the one who looks at it, the spectator makes art by making the infrathin. He captures the subtlety of things at the extreme peak of its manifestations. The viewer sinks instead to analyze the sensations that pass through an isolation of the infrathin. It is about setting a new threshold of perceptibility since the sharpness of the imperceptible is always at stake. Inhabiting the imperceptible means never exhausting its subject, its appearances. He can never give an exhaustive description. The most delicate and meticulous change of the sense leads us to have to think on a case-by-case basis.
Finally, it would be to deny that the aesthetic experience of immersion is measured in terms of descriptive statements of the art object. That is, we cannot apply strokes like red, curve, tall to the immersive aesthetic concept. The judgment of taste of an immersion device is rather based on the qualities of intensity of the aesthesia because of the tenuousness of the sensation. In this respect, the aesthetic concept of immersion belongs to the hyper-aesthetic concepts that are based on a tiny difference in perception, not measurable and not quantifiable. The addition of the prefix hyper- (from ancient Greek ὑπέρ, beyond) signifies the excess of the aesthetic experience to the physical limits of the sensory. The hyper-aesthetic statement is more unstable, suspenseful and impure than the classical aesthetic concept. It is unstable and suspenseful because it relies on states that are likely to oscillate between raw sensoriality and self-reflection, between anesthesia and maximum sensory acuity, between the loss of self and the meditative landmark. It is impure since the disappointment of the expectation of the object accords with the pleasure of aesthesia procured by the exploration of the elusive. Finally, it is impure because it proceeds from the unexpected experience that escapes from the harmonious contemplation of the object. In this perspective, the hyper-aesthetic concept contributes to the renewal of the taste judgment of immersion installations. It is supposed to illuminate the strange, disturbing and frustrating aesthetic experience that challenges our sensory habits.

References:

(1) See http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/241.
(2) M. MASSIN, Expérience Esthétique et Art Contemporain, op. cit., p.105.
(3) The hyperesthetic experience refers to the experience of excess caused by the anesthetic limits of anesthesia. T. DAVILA, On the infrathin, chapter I.
(4) Personal translation. See the English version on http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/241.
(5) Interview with Anthony Gormley. See http://madame.lefigaro.fr/celebrites/antony-gormley-iron-man-260215-94914.
(6) T. DAVILA, De l’inframince, op. cit., p.31.
(7) Ibid. p.64.
(8) F. SIBLEY, « Les concepts esthétiques », op. cit., p. 43-60.
(9) From Gormley’s Blind Light viewer testimony. See on
http://www.pointscommuns.com/reminiscent-drive-commentaire-musique-67606.html
(10) T. DAVILA, De l’inframince, p. 32-35, 54-56.
(11) T. DAVILA, De l’inframince, op. cit., p.55.
(12) M. MASSIN, Expérience Esthétique et Art Contemporain, op. cit., p. 109.
(13) Ibid. p. 111.
(14) From the testimony of Seth Stevenson who was floating in a floating bath. See on http://www.slate.fr/story/73083/extase-vide-caisson-isolation-sensorielle
(15) See on this point Rafael TIFFANY, Seeing Oneself Seeing “The Weather Project”: Notes on Olafur Eliasson’s Institutionalized Critique, http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/anamesa/archive/fall_2008_perception/seeing_oneself_seeing_the_weather_project.pdf
(16) M. MASSIN, Expérience Esthétique et Art Contemporain, op. cit., p. 100.(17) From the testimony of the spectator of an exhibition of Blind Light by Antony Gormley. See http://www.pointscommuns.com/reminiscent-drive-commentaire-musique-67606.html.
(18) « Capsule outil : Expérience mystique et méditation : les corrélats neurobiologiques ». See on http://lecerveau.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_bleu27.html
(19) From the Weather Project viewer comment: “There was only the spiritual feeling.” See on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dFOphuPqMo.
(20) On this point see the testimony of the viewer of Weather Project https://skandihus.wordpress.com/tag/weather-project/.
(21) M. MASSIN, Expérience Esthétique et Art Contemporain, op. cit., p. 99.
(22) The presentation of an exhibition Ecstasy: In and About Altered States. See onhttp://moca.org/museum/exhibitioninfo.php?useGallery=1&id=360.
(23) The viewer testimony of Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project. See onhttps://skandihus.wordpress.com/tag/weather-project/.
(24) The testimony of the viewer of Blind Light. See on http://www.pointscommuns.com/reminiscent-drive-commentaire-musique-67606.html.
(25) Violane BOUTET DE MONVEL, La Multiplicité de l’Espace Dans l’oeuvre de Bill Viola, 2011.
(26) T. DAVILA, De l’inframince, op. cit., p.91-92.