Critical ambience

Dovey, Jon; Hayler, Matthew

Abstract

This chapter argues that ambient cultural practices can be reframed as critically focused experiences rather than either passive backgrounds or immersive entertainment. We argue that ambient literature can leave the reader or listener with a heightened sense of our interconnection with, and responsibilities to, our shared worlds. A critical awareness of this situation may well be fundamental to advancing socially, environmentally, and politically engaged practices in emergent forms of ‘extended reality’ media. Moreover, we want to argue that practices of critical ambience can speak back to some of the current problems posed by the totalizing discursive framings of ‘immersion’.

• Online Publication Date: Dec 31, 2020
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 6, 2020
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 141-161
• Edition: 1
• Book Title: Ambient Literature: Towards a New Poetics of Situated Writing and Reading Practices
• Chapter Number: 7
• ISBN: 9783030414559
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41456-6
• Keywords: ambient cultural practices, immersive entertainment, extended reality
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6829888
• Publisher URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030414559
• Contract Date: Nov 1, 2020