States of Immersion Across Media

Philippe Bédard is an independent researcher with a fascination for moving image media and their technologies. As part of his postdoctoral research, he focused on virtual reality, with a focus on the notion of empathy. Finally, he has worked extensively in and around the immersive media industry in Montreal, including work with Xn Québec, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the National Film Board of Canada’s interactive studio, and SODEC. Alanna Thain is associate professor of cultural studies, world cinemas and gender, sexuality and feminist studies at McGill University. She directs the Moving Image Research Lab, devoted to the study of the body in moving image media and research-creation practices. She is author of Bodies in Suspense: Time and Affect in Cinema (2017) and co-editor of Lo Tech Pop Cult: Screendance Remixed (2024). She co-directs the research project The Sociability of Sleep, and is director of the research team CORÉRISC, on epistemologies of embodied risk. Her work on immersive practices concerns the intersections of mobile media, dance movement, soft bodies and ambient ecologies, in projects such as Cinema Out of the Box, a bike powered mobile cinema, and in essays such as “Anarchival cinemas.” She is also a member of GRAFIM. Carl Therrien is professor of cinema and game studies at Université de Montréal. He has explored the notion of immersion and affective ecologies in his Ph.D dissertation and in multiple papers and book chapters over the years. He has published extensively on the current challenges of video game historiography through case studies of specific genres such as visual novels, horror games and first-person shooters. In The Media Snatcher (Platform studies, MIT Press, 2019), Therrien builds upon previous findings through a comparative study of the TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine, confronting American and Japanese perspectives of this expansive technological platform. He has co-founded the History of Games international conference series and has contributed to the annual Game history symposium in Montreal since 2014.