Missing in Action: Embodied Experience and Virtual Reality

Abstract

Cardboard or equivalent systems that strap your smartphone into a headset as the source of computing power. 8 In many cases, the headphones can be plugged into the system and worn over the headset to provide some level of surround sound, although the sound quality tends to scale with the price. All of the headsets are fitted using a strap around the back of the head, and some of them include a strap over the top of the head (fig. 1). The effect for the wearer is that she is inside the virtual world, able to look in any direction around, above, below, or behind her as if she was "really there."Writer and producer Jason Ferguson claimed recently that "virtual reality has a storytelling problem and theater will save it." 9 He explained that the problem is caused by first-person delivery modes, which tend to struggle with linear narratives. Indeed, VR and immersive theatre can assist each other in the storytelling process. In Virtually Dead the VR element of the production is a zombieshooting game in which zombies attack you from every angle out of the dark, creating a sense of pleasurable anxiety akin to being inside a horror movie, which enhances the framing narrative provided by the immersive theatre element. 10 However, VR is not necessarily a storytelling medium, and often it is essentially an experiential medium. While these new technologies are still at an early stage of development, with Oculus Rift launched in April 2016 and HTC Vive a month later, it seems that the primary market is likely to be in the provision of "experiences" for users, much like the "holodeck" in the television and film world of Star Trek. What would it be like to be onstage with Madonna, or in a haunted house, or on planet Mars, or in a battle zone? With VR, even more than with theatre alone, we can be anywhere and do anything-the possibilities for theatre are seemingly limitless.In the first monograph on the subject, in 2012, Josephine Machon suggests that the rise in popularity of immersive theatre is representative of a desire for real-world, interpersonal communication in physical space, in direct rebellion against the disembodied, distancing effect of VR, social media, and online existence. 11 I will argue, on the contrary, that this emphasis on experiences and interactions in, and with, VR environments can enable us to relocate ourselves as embodied beings rather than distancing us from our bodies. These environments allow us to ask questions about embodiment and humanity through the experiences of our individual bodies in a way that has never been possible before. The nature of action in virtual worlds is such that our bodies are both present and absent, experiencing agency and aspects of sensation even though there is no direct contact between flesh and world. How do we approach the nature of embodied experience in VR when anything can be done, but the body is apparently missing? It becomes possible to explore impossible situations and experiences through the eyes of others. We can begin to learn what it might feel like to be b...

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