The Multimodality of Immersion
Human perception is considered multimodal in that it depends on the processes of interaction and imbrication of the five senses that occurs in consciousness. Recent research into synaesthesia finds that a far greater percentage of the population has synaesthetic capacities than was earlier thought (although they are oftentimes unaware of those capacities). Moreover research has found that the synaesthetic intermingling of sense perception and cognition produces far more complex experiential results than a simple combination of five discrete senses would imply.
Aesthetic experience relies equally on the intermodality of aesthetic objects themselves: all media, old and new alike, generate multimodal orchestrations and thus appeal to various channels of communication and affection.
What are the consequences of these interminglings in production and reception for a theory of immersion? I will argue that immersion is the name we give to the experience we have when our senses are attuned by a medium or a text to the expansive possibilities of our intermodality capabilities.
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