[Air-L] New book: Immersion and Participation in Punchdrunk's Theatrical Worlds

[Carina Westling]

Dear all,

My book *Immersion and Participation in Punchdrunk's Theatrical Worlds
*(Bloomsbury)
is now available in paperback, hardback and e-book (
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/immersion-and-participation-in-punchdrunks-theatrical-worlds-9781350101944/).
It is an in-depth exploration of immersion and participation in
cross-platform spaces, and introduces a theoretical framework that allows
for interrogation of virtual and physical scenographies and the inflection
of conditions of possibility by how audience/user agency is modelled by
their designers.

The book is written around case studies of Punchdrunk, Chinese Room, Blast
Theory, The Mill and other digital and cross-platform designers and an
in-depth ethnographic study of how audiences and makers perceive
interaction across interfaces. To accommodate analyses of cross-platform
experience designed for immersive experience, I drew on critiques of
representation in and beyond performance, media philosophy, critical
posthumanism and infrastructure studies to articulate questions around
space and place in interactive systems.

Central to the book is a study of how experience is produced in interaction
with designed virtual or physical spaces by audiences, and the role of
complicity. The theoretical framework that the book introduces affords
analyses of material cultures and the influence of technology on
interaction design in theatre and beyond, and offers a blueprint for
next-generation immersive design and scenography for interactive multimedia
environments.

Carina Westling
Lecturer, Cross-Platform Media
Bournemouth University
cwestling at bournemouth.ac.uk
ORCID 0000-0002-6549-0974
Twitter: @doctrixwestling