Pre-registration for the conference is welcome at: kulturforschung.fbmd@h-da.de

About the conference series

“Immersive media” are mostly associated with the fascination of providing an augmented and/or virtualEigenwelt for its recipients, and enabling them to giving themselves completely over to it, thus intensifying their feelings and experiences. -
Ex\\Immersio has been a series of conferences since 2020, which aims to brush
against the grain: Its name expresses a figure of thought, that pursues a critical intellectual and
artistic discourse on the popular term of “immersion”, scrutinizing the ubiquitous and overused term. By questioning and analyzing its axioms and implicit assumptions,

Ex\\Immersio strives for critical artistic and philosophical positions, and different, maybe innovative reception paradigms. The conference series aims at experts active in the creative production with
so-called immersive technologies, and intends to focus on the latters’ aesthetic as well as social
promise of enveloping (“embracing”) the recipient by audiovisual media .Ex\\Immersio considers itself as a process towards finding innovative media’s identity beyond an mere immersive envisioning. The ongoing process is built on exchange by getting to know each other’s artistic practices and discourses.
In this year’s Ex\\Immersio, European experts involved in the creation of e.g. 360°-film, 3D-Audio, Augmented and Virtual Reality meet for the 5th time.

The upcoming conference’s edition puts an emphasis on the question of the immersive
environment’s relation to visitors and audiences:
Does immersion necessarily imply more inclusion for the audiences?
And, if yes, why and how? In which way can immersion fulfill the individual’s age old wish of being not only the “enduring” recipient, but an equal partner in what is shown and performed? Are immersive experiences more “friendly” to its audiences than the frontal ones, as they have the recipients counted in from the beginning, not just conceiving them as the ones to receive, but to partake? And, is immersion really an appropriate term to describe the experience of “being in”? Inspired by Roy Ascott´s essay “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?” (1990), who explored the impact of
computers and communication technology up to the manufacture of “telematic culture”, the
symposium challenges the proclamation of an “immersive culture”.

During the conference meetings, the participants share the projects they are currently working on, give insights into their technological equipment and facilities. Students of the Master´s program International Media Cultural Work will give poster presentations and have the opportunity to exchange knowledge with experts in order to form an artistic and technological network of production and theory.