It is hard to know which came first—a new worldview, that is, one that was at least seen as contemporary, formed along with the emergence of a digital age at the beginning of the 60s of the last century, or a new practice by artists who developed new forms of work, thereby changing the ways that classical institutions operated and, in many places, redefining the way audiences encounter the art work. What had initially been heralded by cybernetics and computerisation led to a technical and media revolution comparable only to the invention of the printed book. With the arrival of the first post-internet generation, not only the existence of the internet became regarded as a natural state of affairs but also a way of thinking characterised by networking, feedback and environments designed in correspondingly intuitive ways. A generation that grew up with computer games not only built interactive worlds in digital playrooms but also carried this way of thinking over to old formats such as performances and exhibitions.

Even before the term “immersion” was used in German-speaking countries to describe a development, which had migrated from technology-based media arts to all other artistic fields by the 90s at the...