07-09-2018 09:17 PM
Hello everyone!
I met some of you only briefly and talked to others
extensively at our OLP Boot-camp. That weekend was a truly unique experience
for me: I was both inspired to the point of being ecstatic and dizzyingly
overwhelmed – almost sounds like experiencing VR!
In fact, this is precisely what I am interested in: the
phenomenology of immersive media, specifically VR. This means I’m interested in
examining the ways in which our embodied self experiences and interrelates with
a given VR environment. In order to understand how to both create and be
creative in VR environments, we ought to be able to articulate our experience
of them. This will not only enable us to create novel experiences, but also to
create them responsibly, taking account their implications for our relationship
to both our self and the world.
You may have noticed I’ve been using “both” a lot. This
implies that there are a lot of things going on when experiencing,
thinking about, and creating a VR environment. VR does away with the experience
of conventionally dualistic opposites in space, such as inside/outside and
here/there. The dissolution of these dualisms affects our experience of time,
which, it seems to me, accentuates an experience of our embodied self as
simultaneously being “here” and “there,”
and in the NOW.
This simultaneity of experiencing my body “being here,” in
the material space of my physical environment and “being there,” in the
immaterial space of my virtual environment (the so-called “duality of
presence”) is what seems to intensify the sensation of space and the
feeling of time as “now.” Ultimately, I think it might be precisely this
intensification of the senses and feelings in VR that, in turn, make us
reconsider our sensation and feeling of our presence (and its significance!) in
the “real” material world.
This is exactly what drew me to VR in the first place: it
reconfigures our conventional understanding and interpretation of sensations,
feelings, and thoughts. And I think we, as humanity, really need to allow for,
create, and explore these new horizons of experiences. Some examples that push
us beyond the boundaries of our comfortable selves are Nonny de la Peña’s VR
experiences she calls “immersive journalism.” One of these is “Hunger in LA”
(2012), A VR reconstruction of an
incident in the line of homeless people waiting to be served food Downtown Los
Angeles. A diabetic man, who was in line for too long, drops on the ground in a
diabetic coma.
When you put on
the HMD, you find yourself on the street, Downtown LA. Nothing in particular
guides you through the situation – except sound. This is a documentary
recording of sound in the concrete space of Downtown LA. So you explore the
environment, and see the animated cutouts of people, with their natural voices.
You hear a woman shouting at people to stay in line, you feel the nervous and
aggressive energy in her voice.
I was very put
off by her tone. Then I suddenly saw a man collapsing and had an instant gut
reaction: I dropped on my knees and tried to help. Although I knew this is not
happening in my “real” space and time, I somehow couldn’t think about that.
There was this intensified feeling of space-time as a pure “here and now.” I
was both inspired and overwhelmed (just like in our OLP Bootcamp!). I need to
act though. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.
For me, “Hunger in LA” revealed the powerful potential of VR
to activate our individual and subjective agency to DO something. To do something about homelessness and people
being deprived of their most deep-seated human needs – for shelter and food. Indeed,
after being Downtown LA in VR you want to go there and do something.
The screen shot below gives you the sense of how the project
“Hunger in LA” looks. It also gives
a direct image of “duality of presence”: the user is simultaneously eplaced
both in the physical space designed for the VR experience and in the
environment of the virtual world itself.
I want the experience that I create for OLP have a similar
effect.
Thank you for bearing with me thinking through this.
Maja
07-11-2018 10:56 AM
The project I’ll be working on is a "Smoke & Mirrors VR" a magic themed VR experience (not wizard) where you embody and are the magician/magic!
Oculus Rift - Hopefully Go in the future