Coming from a foreign background I have the luxury of seeing the english language from outside and one of the words that I heard the most lately is “immersive”.

When you’re learning a new language you always ask for definition - you like to grasp the full meaning of every word- and every time that I’ve stumbled upon this word, very different meanings were associated with it.
A poet and english friend of mine Alex Levene, once told me:

“English is not a good language for definition, it’s not Greek or German, we are not good at defining things.”

But at the same time English is one of the most spoken languages in the world, so I guess it makes sense to try to understand words that are used y so many people.

The contemporary success of Immersive theater and the so called Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies (ISET, yes there is also an acronym!) are not helping in having some clarity about what we mean when we use this word. A try on finding a definition has been made by the organizer of the Immersive Design Summit (now called HERE) that in 2019 did a Industry report, asking creators a definition of what they do, “what is immersive”.  You can read up to 40 different words (some of them being party, surreal, dreamlike and the most common being interactive), all of them being qualities and not definitions.

This richness, or confusion, is due to the fact that “immersive” is a very powerful and market-wise successful word - and creators need to sell tickets and be relevant - but as all the umbrella term and buzzword it doesn’t help the designer (or the audience) so much. If asked for definition the first designer reaction is “who cares?”, or “immersive means what do you want it to mean” and then move on and create their arts and market it as “immersive”. Some designers tried to wrap their head around it, stepping in the field of theory and the result are really interesting and helpful, some example are “Pattern of Transformation” by Ida Benedetto or “In-game: from Immersion to Incorporation” by Gordon Calleja (MIT press). These great synthesis are the result of a lot of research, reading and sweat.

As a designer I never felt the urge to really understand the terms that I was using, after all to survive as creative person it’s hard enough. If you find a word (gamification, disruptive, machine learning, AI) that helps your struggles I feel like you should make the best use of it. I’m still non-judgmental but my attitude changed when I started teaching and I’ve remembered how much theory is important to create the foundation of creativity (and I had to be clear in my classes as well). In a book that we will explore extensively in later chapters -Art as Experience by John Dewey- I found this quote:

“It is quite possible to enjoy flowers in their colored form and delicate fragrance without knowing anything about plants theoretically. But if ones sets out to understand the flowering of plants, he is committed to finding out something about the interactions of soils, air, water and sunlight that condition the growth of plants […] theory is a matter of understanding.”

At the end of the day, we can say, “I felt so immersed”, or “I really liked that game because it was so immersive”, but we are just appreciating experiences using a new word.

Theory is a matter of understanding. Especially if you are a designer that works at the intersection between different arts, where everything is part of the experience that you want to create for your audience, you can keep creating the beautiful flower that is much appreciated, but I’m sure that you have internalized so much knowledge on how the soil, the sun and watering works. The texts that follows are an personal exploration not a research, and it mostly consist in a chain of books that I had the opportunity to read.

My feeling is that the more creators take some time to look back at their practice and try to conceptualize it, the more the form will advance also when these creators will end their cycle of creativity.

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