XR journalism has an unlikely lineage. Its maternal ancestors include print newspapers, broadcast TV, feature magazines, and social media networks. Its paternal forebearers have scaled from illusory Renaissance paintings to 19th century battle panoramas all the way to bulky head mounted displays. These distinct ancestries have merged to give birth to a new generation of media, a strange new combination of the things they've handed down [1].
This opening chapter lays the foundation for the ensuing analysis: here you will find abbreviated histories of extended reality and journalism, respectively, from 1789 to 2020. I lean on works by leading scholars on each topic: Oliver Grau for immersion, and Michael Schudson and Peter Dahlgren vis à vis journalism. By practicing this basic media archaeology, it is clear that XR and journalism are at consequential moments in each of their histories. The trends that I discuss below are largely troublesome; XR and journalism are only a worthwhile combination if they can be mutually beneficial, addressing problems that are laced throughout their respective histories.
The history of XR is, in short, a story of illusion. Western Europeans laid a foundation for immersive media during the Renaissance era, when they painted early spaces of illusion. Frescoes entertained and disoriented guests in private homes and country villas: the landscape paintings on the walls created the impression of being in another place altogether [2]. In the same period came panoramas: 360 degree paintings built into circular rotundas, first patented in 1789. Works like the panorama of London from Albion Mills were installed in public places and experienced collectively: audiences reported dizziness, sickness, and powerful disorientation when these paintings overtook their field of view [3]
Photo of London from Albion Mills panorama, found at Princeton Graphic Arts.
The paintings were precise and the spatial dynamics carefully contrived. The panoramas brought the audience closer to the image than ever before, creating the near sensation of presence in these foreign landscapes. In an account of the Albion Mills panorama, Alexander von Humboldt wrote: "The paintings on all sides evoke more than theatrical scenery is capable of because the spectator, captivated and transfixed as in a magic circle and removed from distracting reality, believes himself to be really surrounded by foreign nature" [4]. For this reason, panoramas were quickly perceived as economical surrogates for travel. But the uses were more pernicious, too: Military leaders commissioned panoramas of battle scenes to produce populist pride and flaunt victories (see: Battle of Sedan panorama). Further, the paintings were so immersive and illusory that they became conduits for national control; Oliver Grau describes how governments induced obedience of its citizens with the panoramic visuals [5]. Immersion in the painted image space caused the suspension of any disbelief in the audience, who became captive to the images that engulfed them.
One of Grau's fundamental threads is that each epoch worked to create maximum illusion with the technical means at hand. That vector has stretched from 1789 to 2020. Please swipe through the timeline below, charting major inflection points in the history of extended reality technology.
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1CFE4IsdWQ99De7ohV_GWio9M9hZ8ylSF-fJVj9O5MZQ&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650
The above timeline intersects with many other histories: none of the progress would be possible without simultaneous inventions of linear perspective (painting), photography, film, gaming, computing, and the networked Internet. To zoom in on XR is to focus on a few common through-lines.
First, images inch closer and closer to representing reality. From the London Panorama to the Sensorama and beyond, immersive visuals have compounded in fidelity, trying to trick your senses into perceiving a foreign landscape. Second, the virtual slowly encroaches on the real. Augmented reality is making a living by integrating the digital into the physical world. In the earlier stage of XR's history, each immersive experience retained in its own magic circle — Alexander von Humboldt even used the phrase above. In essence, the magic circle refers to the consecrated spot where a game is played; it demarcates a clear boundary between play and ordinary life [6]. Think of a soccer field or a VR arcade: places where you go to play, governed by an individual game's rules. You would briefly wear the Sword of Damocles or EyePhone, or enter Myron Krueger's Video Place for a few minutes. It was enclosed, temporary, and clearly separated from real life.
But lately, XR has challenged the magic circle's binary formulation and blurred the line between the virtual game space and ordinary life. In an augmented reality game like Pokémon Go (released 2016), which places digital Pokemon artifacts pinned to locations in the real world, the magic circle knows no bounds. "It extends and encapsulates everywhere... It is impossible to escape the temporal and spatial boundaries of Pokémon Go." [7]. Even when not playing the game, your mind might drift to the potential presence of virtual Pokémon nearby. As a player, you straddle the blurred line between the real and virtual, beginning to conflate them in your daily experience. Yes, this is a darker trend in extended reality, but it underlies its history: the technology actively tries to bridge the real and the virtual and is shameless about doing so.
A third evident trend is the disappearance of the mixed reality interface. First the rogue inventors, then the academic researchers, and followed by the huge technology corporations, have worked to make XR feel as natural and interface-less as possible. Since the days of Oliver Wendell Holmes' original stereoscope, the technology overtook your field of view so much that you would ignore the glasses you were wearing. Jaron Lanier's DataGlove was 1984's version of a VR controller; the VPL Research team rendered your physical hand movements as actions in the virtual world. When you dipped your head into the Sensorama, it tried to replicate every sense on that motorcycle ride to the point that you would forget it was a machine at all. As this concept evolved, interactions with the digital became as natural as the pinching of your fingers. First-time users of Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, or Oculus Quest hand tracking react with awe to manipulating floating digital objects with a pinch of their pointer and thumb — this feeling of controller-less agency intensifies the immersion.
But to be immersed is not necessarily a solo experience; there has also always been a stark divide between private and public modes of immersion. In the Renaissance period, frescoes were in private homes, while panoramas were public displays. Stereoscopic glasses worked for singular viewers; Teleview 3D films were a shared experience. The Sword of Damocles was a one-person HMD, whereas Krueger's Videoplace connected multiple virtual avatars. Today, VR headsets are enclosed, exclusionary spaces, with the possibility of social VR. AR glasses can lock you in your own subjectivity or enable a shared experience of the common world.
But above all else, these extended reality innovations belong to an effort to shorten the psychological distance between the observer and the image. This vector is of particular interest to Oliver Grau: immersive media create the sensation of presence in a virtual world. XR technologies work to convince you that the 3D whale you see on your coffee table (Magic Leap), the pizza you smell (Sensorama), or the digital silhoutte you affect (Videoplace) are actually there. Our minds have gotten sharper at spotting illusion since the days of the panorama, but a truly powerful VR experience can create an unshakable sense of presence in the digital and a disembodiment from the real. Seen this way, extended reality technologies have been slowly evolving as instruments of illusion, dangerous tools made to collapse the difference between image and reality, to confuse, disorient, and displace. Such a future might come to pass in future iterations of the technology. XR's intersection with the history of journalism is consequential for its path forward.
