Week Two - Topic 1f: Immersive Interactivity

What do you make of Lunenfield’s concept of ‘immersive interactivity’? What could we apply it to?

Lister: page 21

Lunenfeld’s concept of immersive interactivity is referring to‘3D worlds’. The term ‘immerse’ means to ‘totally occupy yourself with something’, therefore what I make of Lunenfelds concept is a type of media where the interactivity takes control of more than one sense, for example reading is visual, listening is hearing. Immersive interaction can take hold of sight, sound, touch etc. This is what Virtual Reality does, and VR can actually be defined as an immersive and interactive experience which is created by a computer.
Immersive interactivity is similar to the concept of hypertext in terms of them both relying on huge databases and also the navigation is alike, only immersive interactivity has advanced technological traits.
In environments using an immersive interaction, the information is displayed in a visual and sensory manner.
Immersive interactivity and virtual reality can be applied to 3-D games where the viewer takes control of a character as if they are them. This has advanced the gaming world significantly from older, 2-D style games but also has negative implications as people get so involved with the games they can begin to loose a sense of actual reality.
Immersive interactivity can now also be applied to some advanced chat rooms and IRC’s where users can create characters of themselves and be involved in a different ‘world’. This combines the ‘new media’ of chat rooms, messenger services and IRC’s and immersive interaction creating yet another type of ‘new media’.