with Gabriel Geneau
- private links -
Immersive audiovisual performance
- currently seeking residency and development opportunities -
As immersive experiences become increasingly common, the notion of immersion is often reduced to a label attached to advanced technological devices. This project instead asks a more fundamental question: what actually makes an experience immersive? We propose that immersion does not arise from immersive technology alone, but from a particular disposition of the participant. To become immersed requires a form of letting go, a willingness to inhabit an unfamiliar atmosphere, yield to the reality it constructs, and suspend the need for control.
Such surrender is never without tension. Entering an unknown atmosphere can be unsettling, opening the possibility of both ecstasy and discomfort.
Through spatialized sound and diffused light, we seek to encourage this oscillation. An enveloping field of distorted sounds may initially feel abrasive, yet gradually reveals rich, soothing textures as the listener lets go. Likewise, diffused light will saturate the space, dissolve visual landmarks, and make orientation uncertain. Participants may either struggle to regain their bearings or allow themselves to merge with the luminous atmosphere.
Once immersed, the audience can be drawn into contemplation and wonder, principal catalysts for the emergence of empathy, ego dissolution, and feelings of oneness. The relationship to the experience becomes both personal and communal, allowing individual reflection to unfold within a shared perceptual space.
Rather than treating immersion as a technological effect, the project investigates its potential as an experiential process. By placing participants in a continual oscillation between sound and light, surrender and resistance, ecstasy and tension, the work explores the conditions through which immersion and contemplation can emerge.
Composition & performance: Gabriel Geneau & Alexandre Sasset-Blouin
Touchdesigner video programming: Alexandre Sasset-Blouin
Multichannel sound programming: Gabriel Geneau
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