this section considers the relationship between immersion and interactivity. Allison Griffiths has argued that interactivity and immersion are ‘blood relations’ (Griffiths,
2013, p. 178); necessitating and enabling one another. Interactive elements are certainly central to immersive pop-up screenings and are prominent within pop-up
cinemas where the ‘reel’ world is expanded out into ‘real’ space. If, as we have seen, serious play creates sensitivity to the virtual then interactivity also attends to the nonlinearity of space-time. Here, I want to argue that interactivity fosters sensitivity to the subject’s agency, but also entrainment, within spatiotemporal assemblages.
In Jameson’s description of Lacan’s mirror stage he writes that this is a point where the child makes ‘the connection between inner motoricity and the specular movements stirring before him’ (Jameson, 1991, pp. 354-355). Here, the imaginary, as well as relating to spatiotemporal orientation, relates to the acknowledgement of agency within space-time; to the realisation that the subject is part of the matter of a world that ‘swarms with bodies and forms’ (355) and can create movements within that matter. Yet, the ‘configuration of space’ that the imaginary offers is not, Jameson argues, ‘yet organized around the individuation of my own personal body, or
differentiated hierarchically according to the perspectives of my own central point of view’ (354-355) so while it carries an awareness of agency, it equally contains a
sense of entanglement. This version of the Imaginary is fruitful for exploring the spatiotemporal experience of pop-up cinema’s interactive immersive imaginary. As I will argue, the interactive-immersive imaginary makes the subject aware of their agency within the spatiotemporal assemblage but also gives them an experience of their lack of distinction from that assemblage.
A similar understanding of the immersive imaginary has been advanced by Hawkins and Straughan in their discussion of the immersive installation art piece Midas (Hawkins & Straughan, 2014). They explore how immersion generates an imaginary of the porosity and physicality of the subject. They argue that the invitation offered to spectators of Midas to ‘touch’ and take part in the piece foregrounds ‘the ongoing process of assembly and dis-assembly of skin and membranes’ (Hawkins & Straughan, 2014, p. 137) that challenges the ‘modern fantasy of closure and self-
completion, orientating us away from the separation of self and world enacted by Cartesian coordinates of vision’ (132). Immersion here, is figured as a kind of
sensory entanglement with other materialities that foregrounds the always incompleteness of forms.
This idea that immersive imaginaries position subjects as embedded within an assemblage that reconfigures them, and that they reconfigure, resonates with how immersion and interactivity are presented in pop-up cinema. This version of immersion can also be elucidated through examining the production of immersion in i-Docs. As the methodology explored, in i-Docs, the user is needed to activate the i- Doc, which can only exist through interaction. An i-Doc is thus a mutual re- assemblage of subject and interface that has an open, nonlinear temporality because the outcomes are affected by the subject’s interaction as well as the i-Doc’s virtual capacities. Creating my i-Doc therefore helped to understand how pop-up cinema screenings – which also require user interaction to function – engage an approach to space-time that is attentive to its ongoing assemblage and within which subjects are active agents. Griffith too, defines interactivity around spectators being able to affect outcomes, positioning it as an invitation to ‘insert their bodies or minds into the activity and affect an outcome’ (Griffiths, 2013, p. 3). As Griffith argues in the context of museum writing, the ‘discursive construction of the term interactivity’ has changed over the years, coming to refer to – more than just manipulating an object – becoming part of the installation.
Immersion as an insertion of self into an activity or object is, I will argue, a key feature of much pop-up cinema. Exploring this with reference to the i-Doc helps to elucidate the connection of this form of immersion to ideas of interactivity. We have seen how, in my i-Doc, an invitation to ‘enter’ signals that serious play, as an immersive viewing practice, is now called for. The enter button also generates the idea that the user is now immersed within the spatiotemporal architecture of the i-Doc; inside it and therefore now able to interact with and affect its trajectories. The explanation of the time view is headed ‘play the pop-up city’; where the word ‘play’ suggests the experimental interactions that are required.
In this section, I explore the spatiotemporal sensitivities that interactive elements of immersive pop-up screenings enable; arguing that they draw attention to the subject’s agency and entrainment. First, though, this section explores how the spatiotemporal assemblage that subjects interact within is constituted by a fusion of ‘real’ and ‘reel’ space. I explore three case studies where immersion refers to an expansion of ‘reel’ space into ‘real’ space as well as to the invitation to visitors to
interact with this expanded filmic geography. In the first part I advance my argument that real and reel space come into contact in pop-up cinema screenings, with reference to a Secret Cinema screening of Miller’s Crossing and Backyard Cinema’s
screening of Romeo and Juliet. At both these events, the fictional worlds of the films shown were recreated in urban spaces. For Secret Cinema’s screening this was an elaborate recreation of the film world of Miller’s Crossing in Hornsey Town Hall, complete with actors, several in-fiction bars and restaurants, staged scenes and a huge building participants could explore. In Backyard Cinema’s screening the
immersive elements were less extensive but the screening was held in achurch with live music, reflecting elements of Baz Lurhman’s Romeo and Juliet. Having argued that real and reel space form an assemblage in these screenings, and that that assemblage brings urban space-time into view as nonlinear, the second part of this section explores how the subject is made aware of their entanglement within this real-reel assemblage. Here I refer to the pop-up cinema Feed Me Films and their event ‘Pulp Kitchen’ where, rather than a recreation of the world of Pulp Fiction¸ participants were given food and drinks relating to particular parts of the film. In the last part of this section I consider the kinds of agency immersion within the real-reel assemblage enables and argue that awareness is created of both the agency and uncertainty that stems from being entrained in an assemblage. As in the previous section, my analysis of these events is entwined with analysis of the i-Doc. However, while the i-Doc has clips of Feed Me Films and Backyard Cinema (both of which can be found in the reel city category and on the time view) there is no clip of Secret Cinema’s Miller’s Crossing because Secret Cinema events have a policy of no cameras at their events.
The rest of the section is split into three parts exploring three elements of the relationship between interactivity, immersion and assemblage. In the first I explore the assemblage of real and filmic space. I consider how the real and the reel come to relate to each other in Secret Cinema’s and Backyard Cinema’s screenings; drawing on Miriam Hansen’s idea that a ‘perceptual continuum’ between on and off screen is engaged by live elements of film screenings. This argument then undergirds what follows. In the second section, I explore how Feed Me Films and
Miller’s Crossing produce a mode of encounter that foregrounds the subject’s haptic
and porous relationship to the (social) world. In the third, I explore the unpredictability of the real-reel assemblage that the subject is incorporated into, with reference to tensions between agency and entrainment in the i-Doc. In doing so, I suggest that pop-up cinema creates a sense that users can actively reconfigure space-time through interaction, but also that such interactions have both limits and unpredictable results.