Book part:

Wirklichkeiten. Über die Hybridisierung von Räumen und die Erfahrung von Immersion

This article extends what was said in my article The Space of Bodily Presence and Space as a Medium of Representation (Böhme 2003). The main point is that the types of space which are relevant for human experience, perception and action are hybrids of different media. On this background a critical concept of virtual reality can be developed – as being structurally different form the actuality of images: to speak of virtual reality is adequate only if there is a hybrid of the space of bodily presence with a pictorial space. Proceeding from this the article tries an approach to immersive media. While phenomena of immersion today are to be found predominantly in the realm of art and entertainment, it is to expected that they intrude the lifeworld more and more in the future.