Creating emotions through digital media art: building empathy in immersive environments

Art has a power different from all other human actions; it can produce a variety of human emotions like nothing else. The main purpose of this chapter is to study the relation between media arts and emotions. Virtual environments are increasingly being used by artists; the use of immersive environments allows the media art artist to go further than express himself, allows that through contemplation and interaction the participant also becomes part of the artistic artefact. Immersive environments can induce emotional changes capable of generating states of empathy. Considering an immersive environment as a socio-technical system, where human and non-human elements interact, establishing strong relationships, the authors used actor-network theory as an approach to design an immersive artifact of digital media art. The use of neurofeedback mechanisms during the participant's exposure to immersive environments opens doors to new types of interaction, allowing to explore emotional states to generate empathy.