Here the work of art is no insulated space, manifesting itself as a microcosm and metaphor and subsisting in a different space, to which there is no access. The spectator no longer stands outside a hermetic world of art which is framed within an image or by the stage. The central focus here was always on concepts such as illusion and distance, which are perceived differently in film to in classical arts: “We’re right in the middle!”, is how Balázs begins his text “The Spirit of Film” (1930), going on to write: “Film has eliminated the spectator’s position of fixed distance: a distance that hitherto has been an essential feature of the visual arts. In order to establish film as its own art form alongside the classic arts such as painting or theater, theorists such as Béla Balázs worked out the properties of film. Even though this marvelous image may be more myth than reality, it must nevertheless have been an outrageous moment to see the depiction of reality captured for the first time in moving images. The latter becomes blatantly obvious thanks to that oft-cited anecdote: At the screening of the film “Arrival of a train at La Ciotat” by the Lumière brothers in 1895, in which a train actually only pulls into the station of the title, many visitors are said to have run from the theater for fear of the approaching danger. The term “immersion” has gone hand in hand with cinema since the beginning and is closely linked to the relevant technical possibilities and the socialization of reception thus far. “Immersion” is the battle cry that haunts press and specialist texts in this context and is cited by manufacturers as a sales argument. Or to stick with our metaphor: The window becomes a pool into which one dives, so to speak, to be immersed in another world. Ultimately the successful application of this technology could revolutionize the film experience. That concept is virtual reality (VR): an artificial world that can be experienced in 360 degrees with the help of VR goggles.
For around five years, new technologies like the Oculus Rift have meant the reemergence of a concept in film discourse that was en vogue during the 1990s, but initially disappeared from the screen due to a lack of practical technical feasibility.
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