Observations: Emmersion in art

I was thinking about emmersion in art vs. passive viewing of art. As i said before, I believe the realm of theatre has hit on this concept, while music and visual art have taken some time coming to this conclusion.

In theatre, the audience is experiencing the performance as a person views a painting, viewing through a type of window. What challenges the viewer is when one's expectations of this window are thrown into chaos when an actor enters into that area from outside, usually from the audience's perspective.

My knowledge of the history of music is limited, but from my understanding it has traditionally been viewed passively in much the same way: the audience 'watches' the performance (on a stage, for example), absorbing the music from one direction(however, one must remember the practice of choirs in cathedrals being split into opposing sides). I have been informed that contemporary music is moving from that direction, adopting a more spatial and directional approach, much like surround sound. For me, this makes the music that much more emersive, maybe even textural, and provides the viewer with not only one more element with which to regard it, but also a way of separating bits of sound into elements that they may not always be inclined to do.

An example from my own experience: I witnessed an electronic composition concert last year, where the pieces were designed in 8 channel surround sound. As a viewer, i was emmersed in 360 degrees of sound, sound which was intentionally broken up directionally. Sometimes the elements would come from the front, then from the back. Other times it would reverberate seemingly randomly from different directions, almost as if it were bouncing within the space. In another instance, it would revolve around me, each speaker growing then fading in volume chronologically as it moved around me. If i closed my eyes, my mind would probably think that my body was spinning (now there's an interesting though, motion sickness triggered by sound). This type of approach to music is more sculptural, more spatial, and more installation oriented than anything i had experienced in regards to sound before. And of course, sculpture, space, and installation is my area of expertise.

Now to deal with visual art. Sculpture, i.e. a figure in a space differs from a painting/drawing in that the viewer has the option of moving around it in 3 dimensions. This is a bit different than the passive viewing of 2 dimensional work; the viewer can experience it from all sides, sometimes even from underneath or above. The result is a dialogue with the audience, where the piece confronts them with the reality that it is a physical object in which one is sharing a space, as opposed to a painting/drawing which within the confines of the frame/edge of the work lies its 'universe.'

To take it a step further, consider installation and environmental art. The artist still works with a given space, yet there can be multiple elements, forcing the viewer to move about in 3 dimensions, effectively being emmersed in the works 'universe.' No longer is the viewer surrounding the object, experiencing it as if one was the moon and the object was the earth; now the viewer is a part of the piece's world, playing the role of the earth surrounded by the moon, sun, stars, a whole galaxy.

I think a suitable analogy for this observation of passive vs. emmersion would be the idea of watching television vs. virtual reality.