Understanding Virtual Embodiment: A Phenomenological Lens (original) (raw)
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The Sociological Review, 2006
This paper explores the organisation of social interaction amongst participants 'in' Virtual Reality. Despite the wide-ranging sociological interest in 'virtual' technologies, there is rather little detailed sociological investigation of user experiences of the virtual technology par excellence, namely multiuser Virtual Reality. Interestingly the discourses that underpin discussions of more mundane virtual technologies (eg email, the Web, mobile phones, etc.) tend to draw on design visions for Virtual Reality, such as the opportunities for social life freed from the constraints of the physical body. This paper contributes to a growing number of empirical studies that provide a critique of this view, but maybe more importantly, provides a detailed analysis of action and interaction in virtual worlds. It considers the organisation of interaction within VR with particular emphasis on the ways in which visual features of the digital domain are seen and shared by participants. The paper describes the ways in which the abilities to share views on the virtual world requires participants to overcome problems associated with the very material character of the VR interfaces. The study is based on the analysis of recordings of a Virtual Reality system that enables participants to talk to one another and see one another's actions within a virtual environment.
2008
How does the user manage an “embodied” identity in the Web case? How can we understand the links between body and identity build in the relation with the Web? The paper will study those questions in trying to clear up the problems related to body, embodiment, subjection and identity. Therefore, the case of Web produces some specificities: user, facing the Internet, is in a position of inaction: sitting in a chair, he only watches the screen and activates the mouse and the keyboard. We can compare this static position to an immersion of the body in a virtual and immaterial world, as the body was extended by that virtual reality. User’s body is investigating the virtual interface, until it becomes the nodal point between virtuality and reality. We will explore the concepts of Body without organs (Deleuze & Guattari) and biosubjectivity (Andrieu) to understand those contexts of virtual world. Finally, we will extend this theoretical approach to a further analysis of what Deleuze called...
Virtual Embodiment, Or: When I Enter Cyberspace, What Body Will I Inhabit?
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2023
The following paper attempts to look at virtual reality technologies—and the (dis)embodiment affected by them—through a phenomenological lens. Specifically, augmenting traditional discussions of virtual reality as a purely technical problem, this paper seeks to bring Maurice Merleau-Ponty's embodied phenomenology into the discussion to try to make sense of both what body we leave behind and what body we gain as we enter virtual worlds. To do this, I look both at historical examples of virtual reality technologies and their methods of (dis)integrating the body and speculative future examples of virtual reality where the corporeal body is fully sidelined through the lens of Merleau-Ponty's account of the body schema, noting that habituation is an ever present factor that must be considered in virtual environments. Ultimately, I conclude that even in a scenario of one-to-one mind-computer transference, the virtual world will, like the physical world we currently inhabit, solicit a 'phantom body' thus forcing us to act and live in accordance with a mutual interplay between self and virtual world.
IDEA, 2020
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The Essence of Virtuality: Exploring the Digital Body
Journal For Virtual Worlds Research, 2010
This “think piece” explores the definitional possibilities of “body”—that is, what is a body and how should we understand it, especially in light of the recent emergence of virtual bodies. To this end, the author employs an essentialist framework for understanding: Is the body reducible to some fundamental essence or substance, something common to all bodies? To what extent does a definition of body extend to virtual bodies? These questions (and others) are posited, and the author invites readers to consider the manifold issues engendered by such reflection.
Embodied Presence: The Imaginary in Virtual Worlds
This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and de-codes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is 'metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov's movement through it'. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human. ABSTRACT This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and de-codes the complex la...
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2000
ABSTRACT: Computer scientists John Canny and Eric Paulos discuss computermediated communication from Cartesian and phenomenological perspectives. The current Cartesian model for teleconferencing ignores the role of the body and breaks communication into separate channels for video, text, and audio. The results are often stilted and unsatisfying. Canny and Paulos propose an alternative model based on a phenomenological integration of physical cues and natural responses.
2009
This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and decodes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles [10: 39] explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is 'metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov's movement through it'. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.
Chiasmi International, 2020
Although Merleau-Ponty never directly addressed the question of technics, over the past three decades, some of the core concepts of his philosophy have profoundly informed digital media discourse, especially in the field of media arts. The problem of embodiment, in particular, represents a keystone for the understanding of the relationship between bodies and technology. This paper seeks to examine the ways in which some of the French philosopher’s key concepts– embodiment, body schema, presence, intertwining, and flesh – have been employed and re-elaborated in the context of media art theory and practice. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the main conceptual entanglements between Merleau-Pontian philosophy and digital arts and performances. Thus, four topics will be discussed: the virtual body, prosthetics, virtual presence, and digital intertwining of flesh. In the conclusion, I question these concepts and their possibility/ability to pave the way for a Merleau-Pontian ...