Abstract: This research situates Douglas Trumbull's movie Brainstorm (1983) in the context of his career, with consideration of the critical, promotional, and trade paratextual material that circulated at the time of the film's initial release. It is argued that Brainstorm presents three layers of technological reflexivity: first, its primary diegetic focus involves the technology of sensory transport and intersubjectivity; second, the film was itself initially designed to introduce a new immersive cinema technology, Trumbull's Showscan format; and third, the actual media format of the released version incorporated alternations between 35mm and 70mm. In the end, Brainstorm delivers a miniature manifesto for technological aesthetics that reveals the material and discursive conditions in which we experience and understand ideas about immersivity and the future of entertainment technology.

Keywords: Brainstorm, blockbuster, technological reflexivity, media format, Hollywood

For all the conceptual challenges the term “immersivity” poses—and the chapters in this book are a fine indication of how generative the idea has been for media scholarship—there is a general popular agreement about what it references in media technology and culture. According to this broad conception, immersivity in media refers to a manifestation—a text, an event, an apparatus—that surrounds and occupies the senses. It describes an interaction between technology and the human sensory system in the production of an environment, which is thought to be better realized when it more completely engulfs individuals and audiences. The ultimate horizon of the most immersive experience possible, then, is the total artwork, one that erases sensory possibilities outside of the artistic construction. Residing in this dominant understanding is a measure of relative success, where the most immersive media situation is that which seals off our senses from the world outside of the artwork effectively and completely.

Yet, a troubling feature resides in this conceptualization of immersivity: it is a particularly functionalist way to think about media and artistic experiences, one that proposes a metric or a scale for such erasure of the difference between artwork and experience. This notion treats the immersive experience rather like a light dimmer one can turn up—allowing less sensory interference from the outside world for maximum immersiveness—or down—allowing more interference, thus reducing sensory melding with the work.