Bodies, Techniques, Practices

Immersion across media opens our perception to altered states of consciousness. Far from disconnecting us from our surroundings, these experiences reframe the ways we connect to the world and to others.
The constant onslaught of new technologies—each allegedly reaching closer to the holy grail of perfect immersion—provides a confusing yet stimulating playground for creators. Myriad new media forms redefine our immersive habits and patterns of gratification. Classical theories of immersion, focused on perceptual illusions or ideal flow states, cannot easily account for this confusing remix of audiovisual forms and practices.
In an age where the production of technologies and forms accelerates, States of Immersion Across Media invites readers to slow down and reflect on immersive practices, both new and old, their impact on our bodies, how they attune our affects, the disruptions they afford, and the creative encounters they generate.

Editors

Philippe Bédard

Philippe Bédard is an independent researcher with a fascination for moving image media and their technologies. As part of his postdoctoral research, he focused on virtual reality, with a focus on the notion of empathy. Finally, he has worked extensively in and around the immersive media industry in Montreal, including work with Xn Québec, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the National Film Board of Canada’s interactive studio, and SODEC.

Alanna Thain

Alanna Thain is associate professor of cultural studies, world cinemas and gender, sexuality and feminist studies at McGill University. She directs the Moving Image Research Lab, devoted to the study of the body in moving image media and research-creation practices. She is author of Bodies in Suspense: Time and Affect in Cinema (2017) and co-editor of Lo Tech Pop Cult: Screendance Remixed (2024). She co-directs the research project The Sociability of Sleep, and is director of the research team CORÉRISC, on epistemologies of embodied risk. Her work on immersive practices concerns the intersections of mobile media, dance movement, soft bodies and ambient ecologies, in projects such as Cinema Out of the Box, a bike powered mobile cinema, and in essays such as “Anarchival cinemas.” She is also a member of GRAFIMS.

Carl Therrien

Carl Therrien is Professor in games and film studies at Université de Montréal. He has explored the notion of immersion and affective ecologies in his Ph.D dissertation and in multiple papers and book chapters over the years. He has published extensively on the current challenges of video game historiography through case studies of specific genres such as visual novels, horror games and first-person shooters. In The Media Snatcher (Platform studies, MIT Press, 2019), Therrien builds upon previous findings through a comparative study of the TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine, confronting American and Japanese perspectives of this expansive technological platform. He has co-founded the History of Games international conference series and has contributed to the annual Game history symposium in Montreal since 2014.