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Immersive Horizons: Blurring the Creative Frontiers Between Virtual and Material Worlds
  • ISSN: 2397-9704
  • E-ISSN: 2397-9712

Abstract

This article proposes a reframing of the contemporary media Narcissus through the lens of the interactive installation (henceforth ), created by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss in 1992. The installation explores the transformative encounter between the self and the other, employing the first high-resolution multi-touch interface, realized as a generative, performative, audiovisual experience. Conventional notions of the self are challenged to reflect on identity, connectivity and the interplay between the tangible and the virtual. In the early 1990s, demonstrated a new way of seeing as observer and observed by looking at ourselves while simultaneously becoming publicly visible to others. A more recent example of seeing the self in the other is (2022), a street art commentary on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by Norwegian artist AFK. Like , it captures the essence of self-discovery in the other, recalling Carl Gustav Jung’s observation in (1933). It raises the question of whether the narcissistic self-image of the past can be transformed into an aesthetic of the empathetic gaze. This could be an extended act of mirroring, corresponding to a world that is tele-present.

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/content/journals/10.1386/vcr_00080_1
2024-07-18
2024-10-04
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References

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