The Politics of Consciousness and Immersive Media: An Integrative Review

Summary

Awe-inspiring experiences and aesthetic rituals can lead to significant changes in knowledge and agency, intersecting with power structures. This review explores various case studies, including shamanic rituals and Surrealist experiments, revealing a common theme: the 'politics of consciousness.' It discusses how altered states and symbolic systems influence worldviews and highlights the role of sacred art and modern media in transforming human experience while also addressing the potential for both empowerment and oppression through technologically-mediated awe.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Awe-inspiring experiences and aesthetic rituals can induce profound epistemic transformations while also intersecting with structures of power. This review examines diverse case studies – from Amazonian shamanic rituals to ancient Egyptian temple arts, Surrealist dream experiments, transpersonal psychology, and science-fiction cyberculture – to understand how designed experiences of awe and immersion can transform or define knowledge and agency. Across these domains, we see a common thread: “politics of consciousness” – the way altered states and symbolic systems affect individual and collective worldviews – entwines with both spiritual mythos, realpolitik (the exercise of power), and sociotechnical imaginaries. We highlight examples of how sacred art-ritual ecologies and modern media techniques serve as architectures of transformation, allude to the distinctions of individual, community and corporate liminoid experiences, and then explore how technologically-mediated awe can both elevate and undermine human freedom. The goal is to elucidate how rituals of awe – including emerging immersive media – function as both tools of epistemic change and sites of political contestation over the human spirit.

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