All About Immersive or That Pesky ‘I-word’

I was out at a show — a really great cabaret show — this weekend from a company whose work I’ve enjoyed and respected for the better part of a decade now. It was fantastic.

Just one little problem: they referred to it “immersive” and it was so far from being remotely interested in being immersive that it bummed me out a bit they were messing around using that word.

The “I-word,” as we call it around here.

We understand why people love using it. When you get really into something and language starts to fail to describe all the thousand different ways that you just felt like… “I was there. It was like a dream. I was… immersed.” See? That simple: it just comes in handy.

Since nearly everyone wants to make stuff that causes THAT kind of reaction from people, it’s practically natural that for (the better part of a decade now) everything from theatre to games to — and I wish I was joking about this last one — toilets have been called “immersive.”

When I see a marketing team use “immersive” in that fashion, I know that they’re using it as a shorthand for “really, really, really engaging.” Just straight up “push all other thoughts out of your head engrossing.”

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Yet around these parts we know that there’s an art to making things immersive. Or perhaps we should say a craft. Maybe a little bit of science too.

In short: there are different ways.

ENGAGEMENT IS TABLE STAKES

Now when we use “immersive” the “really, really, really engaging” bit is table stakes. If your piece — be it theatre, game, restaurant, shopping mall, but, please, no toilets — doesn’t produce that level of hyper-engagement (what in the VR world we still call “presence”), then you’re not really making something that’s immersive.

Let me rephrase: you’re not even TRYING to make something that is immersive.

And that’s okay. Not everything has to be immersive. And not everything should be.

The moment you are trying to capture when you set out to make an immersive work is simple: you are trying to make someone else feel like they are in the world you have built for them. That no matter which direction they go next — whether they are choosing to go, following along, or being prodded — that they are IN that world and that it SEES them. Responds to them at some basic level. It doesn’t even have to be physical traversal, but the world that you build needs to respond to the participant in some fashion (and, yes, emotional and narrative responses count).

Immersive work puts the audience on the same level as the work itself.

The work is there not only to be seen and heard, but to see and hear the audience as well. It does this in a way that shuns abstraction, ever endeavoring to make the “user interface” of the experience as close to “being a human, in a world” as possible.

These are not absolutes, of course.

Get Noah J Nelson’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

Make-believe requires some degree of abstraction, even if it’s just a simple password that ends the scene if the player no longer wishes to play. The more abstractions that can be stripped away, the fewer barriers there are to the participant finding themselves “really, really, really engaging” with the work.

Nor does this mean that an “immersive” work cannot be complex. Far from it. Like many games, there can be a simple set of rules, but countless permutations of the outcome. Complexity is often a matter of how much power is placed in the hands of the players and the performers (when any are present) to make choices within the broader rules of the world around them.

When we talk about immersive theatre, the discipline that we began our study of immersive experiences around here with, we talk about it in terms of “a play you can play.”

That spirit is the one that animates much of our inquiry, and that spirit is one we encourage those of you who are building any kind of immersive experience — from theme park to speakeasy to projection-mapped installation to live action game — to take up. To present your guests with an invitation to play with you. Not to just be your dutiful audience or contestant, but a co-author of the work. Even if they are the only ones who will ever know that version of the experience.

Create mystery. Reward curiosity.

Encourage the exploration of new perspectives.

Any way: back to the cabaret I mentioned.

The waitstaff referred to what was going to happen as “really immersive.” This because the actors were singing in the aisles, breaking the fourth wall, and complicating the delivery of cocktails from the bar. (Which, to be honest, is just table stakes for good cabaret. You have to be kind of dead inside if you don’t want that.)

For its part, the show just wanted us to clap and cheer, not take up a “role” in the production. Which is okay! Something being immersive doesn’t automatically make it good. Far from it.

Calling something “immersive” when it doesn’t even try to invite the audience “in” on the act? Well, that’s just a waste of everyone’s time and good will. The show might be “really, really, really engaging,” but those who have been to truly immersive work will just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It is here that people like to make the argument that what we’re really talking about is just interactive theatre or experiences. To which I say: improv shows and pub trivia night are interactive theater and experiences, respectively. No one would mistake them for being immersive without some effort to draw the audience into the world of those events. Interactivity can help create the immersive effect, and it is often a key ingredient. It is not, however, the sole determining factor.

Others say that immersive means “all around you.” Which is closer to the mark, especially when we speak of art installations. Yet my counter-challenge is: it may be all around you, but does it fill the whole space? Or is there still a barrier between the observer and the observed?

At the end of the day, what matters is the creative intent.

This is the central question of any immersive work: who is the audience and what are they here to do?

Are they being invited to be actively part of a world? To explore it on their own terms? Or are they there as mere consumers? Are they the players/heroes/sidekicks/co-writers or are they just the cheering section?

The answer to these questions, and how you feel about them, determines whether or not this work is for you.

For more on the language of immersive & experiential work, check out our ever-evolving glossary and catch the Immersive 101 segments on our podcast starting with episode 301.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.

NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!

In addition to the No Proscenium website, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Discord.