Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion

The computer's ability to immerse a user in virtual image spaces "is not the revolutionary innovation its protagonists are fond of interpreting it to be," Grau writes. "The idea of virtual reality only appears to be without a history; in fact, it rests firmly on historical art traditions." Grau (lecturer in art history at Humboldt University in Berlin, associate professor at the Kunstuniversitat Linz in Austria and leader of the German Science Foundation's project on immersive art) traces the lineage of virtual reality as far back as the frescoes of a villa in Pompeii.

Editors of Scientific American
Review
"...Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion puts forth the sort of provocative insights that any Newromancer fan can appreciate."
— Wired

"Grau has created a volume that will likely be used as a canonical text in the study of virtual reality...."
— Patrick Lichty, Intelligent Agent

"Grau traces the lineage of virtual reality as far back as the frescoes of a villa in Pompeii."
— Scientific American

"Grau's Virtual Art opens the door onto a significant new approach to media analysis by focusing in depth on a particular kind of digital art—the attempt to create immersive environments. The combination of media archeology and careful analysis of both the possibilities and limitations of the impulse to put the viewer inside the artwork will make this book a valuable resource to both practitioners and theoreticians."
—Stephen Wilson, Professor of Conceptual and Information Arts, San Francisco State University, and author of Information Arts

"Highly original ..."
— Alison Abbott, Nature

"Long established in Germany, media studies is just beginning to get hot in English-speaking countries. Grau's book makes a crucial contribution to this field by raising the bar for any future archeology of a virtual computer image. Equally at home in art history, media history, and new media art, Grau situates immersive image spaces of new media within a rich historical landscape. A must-read for anyone interested in new media, visual culture, art history, cinema, and all other fields that use virtual images."
—Lev Manovich, author of The Language of New Media

"Oliver Grau expands notions of immersion with a comprehensive overview of artistic meditations on illusion, presence and space. Using historical and innovative media-art project examples, he offers multiple perspectives on the evolution of our world-view. No doubt this volume will be a useful resource for any serious practitioner and/or theorist engaging the merging of art, science and technology."
—Victoria Vesna, Chair, Design and Media Arts, University of California, Los Angeles

"Oliver Grau has given us one of the more fascinating works this year."
— Guy Van Belle, European Photography

"The highly ambitious task of locating the latest image technologies within a wider art-historical context has now been accomplished."
—Friedrich Kittler, Humboldt University, Berlin, and author of Gramophone, Film,