Dialogical Self on Virtual Reality Systems: Presence and Embodiment in Human Situated Interaction

A method for creating interactive, user-resembling avatars

“…Using the avatar, the user is able to give meaning to their virtual self and that correlates with the sense of presence (De França & Soares, 2015). The concept of presence, as mentioned by De França & Soares (2015), allows a discussion about self representations at three different, yet interdependent levels: body, affection and identity. Focusing on those three levels is specially important in VR applications in order to improve the user's performance in the system.…”

“…Considering the three levels of self representation presented by De França & Soares (2015), the system exploit mostly the body and identity levels. On one hand, the creation of the avatar assumes a body position and shape that is intrinsically connected with the user to create a self representation.…”

Metaphors and Embodiment in Virtual Reality Systems

“…Think about the symbolic representation of the human in the virtual environment requires thinking about the physical body and how we consciously and unconsciously use it in our everyday life of screens: when we are in virtual environments we can enter, leave, perceive the environment, be located, interact, look, focus attention, gesturing, set the mood, to communicate, to talk about a point of view, shape the environment and create whatever it is from everything we know about the physical world, from everything that is familiar for us [5].…”

“…In this sense, the characters created by the users present themselves looking like humans (anthropomorphism) in ways that they communicate, look, move, dress and gesture, not only to be more convincing and credible, favoring a greater appreciation and enjoyment of users [8], but also enabling the orchestration of the visual-motor aspects (physical body) and the semiotic mediation (metaphors on the screen), which helps the user to build a sense of self and of the environment that allows to act in and update the synthetic world [5].…”

“…Through these devices and the system itself, the senses and abilities of people are magnified in intensity in time and space [13] so that people not only dip into an illusion but to perceive contextually the experience by even the sensation of physical involvement [4,5,14,15].…”