Surrounded by Immersion: Spatial Audio - from the 17th century beyond the age of Metaverse

🇬🇧 Within the past 15 years, immersion has become a frequently used term in concert venues and studios with multichannel-loudspeaker arrays, in the context of audio-visual caves, VR, AR and fine arts. Manufacturers of loudspeaker systems as well as the gaming industry are using the term as a feature that heralds a new step in “multi-media” experiences, and academia is claiming a kind of expertise in this field based on years of scientific experimentation and avant-garde practice. At the same time, exhibition halls thematise immersion in VR as a socio-political issue of the present and contemporary club culture is making a shift towards "immersive, new worlds of experiences ranging from the most subtle and nuanced to the most intensely visceral, from healing and meditative to thought provoking and radical". 

These days, protagonists of Pop music, Ambient and experimental forms of Club and Rock music are idolised by loudspeaker companies and produce, within very short rehearsal times, “immersive experiences” for festivals and museums. 

Although the idea of immersion is rather old and accompanying human activities for centuries it became the keyword for current revisions be it in philosophy, art, geography, the arts, sciences, economics and other such as academic and non-academic discourses.

Immersion is without doubt a subject of debate and current relevance. But what can we expect from this terminology and its applications when it comes to an extended artistic articulation as well as advanced production, and what are its implications for the shared perceptive situation of artists, engineers and audiences in the Now? 

Within recent years, the use of spatial audio (e.g. Ambisonics) has come into the focus of game design, online platforms such as YouTube, and companies like Google, Apple and Facebook, as well as consumer electronics, event locations, and architecture. Quite likely in the near future artificial auditory environments will be part of everyday life, and for a great number of people, a part of their reality. The emerging question is, who creates these environments and with which intentions, and how can music, sound art, and design contribute with their own strategies, to such a reality?