INTO WORLDS. The Craft of Blurring Boundaries

The conference “INTO WORLDS” will explore three different areas of the immersive arts: physical techniques and crafts, spectacular entertainment formats, ranging from vertiginous funfair attractions to virtual reality, and spiritual mental practices between religious contemplation and meditative self-optimisation. Immersion is revealed to be an ambivalent movement. One the one hand, it stands for obliviousness of self or of the media, for spiritual exercise or ecstasy, but on the other, it gives cause for repudiation and critical reflection: Who creates these various worlds that we participate in daily? How are they created? And to what purpose? Which roles do we get caught up in and how do we contribute to forming these worlds? More information

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Programme

10:00 to 19:00
Notget
Virtual Reality Experience by Björk
Whitebubble
Sound installation with works by Frank Bretschneider, Julius Holtz, jayrope, Sven König, Richard Scott
For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Journey Into the Sonic History of Conflicts
Field Recordings by Samson Young
Clapping performances by OBJECTIVE SPECTACLE
Interventions by !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Video art by Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Trisha Baga, Jon Rafman and Jeremy Shaw – from the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Dusseldorf/Berlin

11:00
16 Hz
Organ concert performance by Adrian Gutzelnig

11:00
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) & Live Action Role Playing (LARP)
Workshop with Claire Tolan and Susan Ploetz
<small>In English</small>

11:30
VR IS THE MESSAGE
Does immersive journalism change the perspective?
Panel with Michael Madary – (philosopher, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz), Graham Roberts – (journalist, New York Times), Susanne Dickel – (VR journalist, IntoVR)
Chair: Annina Zwettler – (programme coordinator for new media, ARTE)
<small>In English</small>

12:30
SPEAK UP!
Performance by Martina-Sofie Wildberger
with Tobias Bienz, Julia Sweing, Tanja Turpeinen

13:00
Lunch in the Lichthof

14:00
Tales of the Floating Class
How the shocks since 2008 have changed the meaning of scripted spaces, immersion and their narratives
Keynote by Norman Klein – (cultural critic & media historian, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles)
<small>In English with simultaneous translation into German</small>

15:00
sense immersion
How to lose or find yourself in fictional scenarios?
Panel with Richard Bartle – (Computer Game Design, University of Essex, UK) and Claire Tolan – (artist, Berlin)
Chair: Sebastian Quack – (game designer & curator)
<small>In English</small>

15:00
realize immersion
To what extent do immersive practices belong to an aesthetic of realism?
Panel with Ute Holl – (media researcher, Universität Basel), Martina Leeker – (theatre and media researcher, theatremaker, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) and Alexander Schwinghammer – (cultural anthropologist, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Chair: Oliver Lerone Schultz
<small>In German</small>

15:00
act immersion
What happens to the audience after it has been abolished?
Panel with Arne Busse – (cultural researcher and advisor of the bpb), Martina Groß – (theatre historian, Universität Hildesheim) and Matthias Warstat – (Sfb Affective Societies, Freie Universität Berlin)
Chair: Sandra Umathum – (theatre researcher & dramaturg, Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin)
<small>In German</small>

16:00
SPEAK UP!
Performance by Martina-Sofie Wildberger
with Tobias Bienz, Julia Sweing, Tanja Turpeinen

17:00
politics of perception
How does immersion operate as a political instrument?
Concluding panel with Robin Curtis – (media culture researcher, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Georg Döcker – (theatre researcher & dramaturg), Barbara Gronau – (theatre researcher, Universität der Künste Berlin) and Thomas Krüger (President of the Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb)
Chair: Andreas Wolfsteiner
<small>In German with simultaneous translation into English</small>