Making Sense of Space

The Design and Experience of Virtual Spaces as a Tool for Communication

Iryna Kuksa,Mark Childs

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780634067
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Scienze dell'informazione e biblioteconomia

The use of Virtual Worlds (VWs) has increased in the last decade. VWs are used for communication, education, community building, creative arts, and more. A good deal of research has been conducted into learning and VWs, but other areas remain ripe for investigation. Factors from technological platforms to the nature and conventions of the communities that use VWs must be considered, in order to achieve the best possible interaction between virtual spaces and their users. Making Sense of Space focuses on the background to these issues, describing a range of case studies conducted by the authors. The book investigates the innovative and creative ways designers employ VWs for research, performance-making, and audience engagement. Secondly, it looks into how educators use these spaces to support their teaching practice. Lastly, the book examines the potential of VWs as new methods of communication, and the ways they are changing our perception of reality. This book is structured into four chapters. An introduction provides a history and outline of important themes for VWs, and subsequent chapters consider the design of virtual spaces, experience of virtual spaces, and communication in virtual spaces.

• Written by two experienced academics and practitioners in the field, offering different perspectives
• Uses a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on: education; scenography; performance studies; disaster management; and computer science
• Provides multiple viewpoints on the topic, gained through interviews and contributions from a range of experts, as well as several co-authored chapters

Part 1

Spaces, presence, realities …

Outline

Chapter 1: Remediating technology, translating experience, immersing in spaces

1

Remediating technology, translating experience, immersing in spaces

Abstract:

This first chapter examines the ways in which we use virtual worlds for communication, learning and creative practices, applying two different theoretical approaches to describe the process of adapting spaces from one medium to another. It looks into the history of virtual spaces and the evolution of new media technologies, providing definitions of terms used frequently to describe the digitality of our everyday experiences. Some of these terms have a multitude of definitions or became interchangeable in the literature, leading to some confusion among researchers. Here, we attempt to clarify, explain and, in places, even redefine some of these terms, aiming at establishing a more coherent approach to researching technological evolution and the emergence of virtual spaces.

Key words

cyberspace

virtual reality

new media technologies

telepresence

immediacy

psychological and perceptual immersion

remediation

translation

mixed reality

augmented reality

A history of virtual spaces and definitions of basic terms

Virtual reality (VR) is a term frequently used in the literature, but to date there is no consensus about how it should be defined. A generally accepted definition of VR is a computer simulation of a real or imaginary system that enables users to perform operations in virtual spaces and shows effects in real time. It is also a part of the global information and communication infrastructure – or cyberspace. ‘What is real?’ asked the character of Morpheus in the blockbuster movie The Matrix (1999, Warner Bros. Pictures). The simple answer would be anything we can explore through our senses. However, our senses can deceive us and something that appears real can be unreal at the same time. To some extent, the terms computer technology and digital technology have become interchangeable. Digitality emerged as instantaneous communication, global connectivity and ubiquitous media that are in charge of almost every aspect of our everyday experience (Gere, 2002). It refers to the capabilities of a particular technology and the way we think about it, combining both technical and creative components and stimulating further technological evolution. Digital technology produces a vast range of applications and media forms, such as virtual reality, digital film and television, electronic music, computer games and various special effects for the entertainment industry, including theatre. At present, it is so well integrated that it appears almost ‘natural’ due to its increasing invisibility. In order to understand how our reality has become digital, it is necessary to look back into the logic of its progression.

Lev Manovich, one of the leading theorists of digital culture and media art, distinguishes two distinct trajectories in the development of new media. The first one is representational technologies, such as film, audio and video magnetic tape, as well as various digital storage formats. The second trajectory is real-time communication technologies – telegraph, telephone, telex, television, telepresence and also virtual and augmented realities (AR). The revolutionary advent of the printing press in the fourteenth century was responsible for the first large-scale media transformation, which resulted in a complete change in communicating visual culture. Furthermore, the invention of photography in the nineteenth century – a major scientific and artistic breakthrough – dramatically altered mankind’s perception and experience of the world. The emergence of cyberspace, as a digital network, remediated the electric communication means of the past 150 years, including the telegraph and telephone. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, authors of Remediation: Understanding New Media, further argue that cyberspace refashions the visual spaces of painting, film and television, and, additionally, such social and historical places as cities and parks, and such non-places as theme parks and shopping malls (Bolter and Grusin, 1999). Despite remediation, all aforementioned media organically coexist and evolve together, as well as contribute and relate to each other’s content. Each of these spaces is a hybrid of technical, social and economic practices and offers its own path to immediacy, with an ability to converge and create something new. Immediacy is often referred to as the absence of a perception that technology is mediating the activity. It is also frequently contrasted with the idea of hypermediacy, in which the technology is perceived. In most cases, complete immediacy is the aim of communication technologies; the noticeable presence of technology is often considered as being a perceptual impediment to a complete feeling of connection with the virtual space, or with others within it. Bolter and Grusin claim that at the present level of technological development, the telephone offers the immediacy of the voice, the television promises the immediacy through its real-time monitoring of the world, and, eventually, the computer facilitates the immediacy that comes through the synthesis of 3D graphics, programming and interactivity (ibid.). In this book, immediacy is equated with transparency, where the medium is virtually absent, making the perception of spaces obstruction- and distraction-free. It is also noted, however, that with some creative, performance and also educational activities, the very awareness of the mediating technology is the aim, where participants (or learners) are asked to focus on the technology and explore their understanding of or reaction to it. Hypermediacy aims to problematize, or seek to question, our relationship with technology, while immediacy aims to use technology to maintain or enhance our relationships with others or with the space. The highest form of immediacy occurs in the interfaceless types of technology such as VR; however, the majority of experiences lie somewhere along the spectrum of complete immediacy and complete hypermediacy (Dobson, 2009: 2).

In the 1984 novel Neuromancer, William Gibson described VR as a fact of our daily experiences and defined ever-growing computer networks as an ‘unthinkable complexity – as a cyberspace’ (Gibson, 1984: 51). Cyberspace emerged as a computer-generated, navigable infinity that seemingly exists behind the computer screen and is able to connect and separate its users at the same time as they are actively engaged in the networked electronic communication (Kuksa and Childs, 2010). It is a space we can inhabit and also a popular trend across computer culture. Cyberspace has already established itself as a standard in human–computer interfaces and digital networks. It embraces a vast range of 3D digital environments that could have some correlation with the real world or could be completely imaginary, such as, for example, online multi-player computer games and virtual learning hubs. These spaces are interactive, navigable in real time, and are not bound by any physical limitations. The current advances in VR applications include the use of computer imaging, sound and sensory systems, in order to put participants in a direct feedback loop with the technology itself and the world it simulates. Rather than offering an environment in which to simply view and hear, as, for example, in traditional theatre or cinema space, VR attempts to create an experience in which users feel as if they are physically involved in the world represented on all sensory levels. There are various external hardware and visualization systems that make interaction with virtual environments possible and achieve different levels of immersion – an experience that underlies all the interactions within virtual and remote spaces. Interestingly, it has proved very difficult for researchers and writers to define the term immersion clearly. There is a general agreement, however, that immersion is not unique to the digital world, because culturally we are long familiar with the idea of becoming ‘lost’ in a book, theatre play, film or television programme. Janet Murray notes that the derivation of this term comes from the experience of being submerged in water. She states that the practice of being ‘transported to an elaborately simulated place [author’s emphasis] is a sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality … that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus’ (1997: 98). Matthew Lombard and Theresa Ditton (1997) argue that this feeling (which occurs while, for example, watching a television programme) could be described as being ‘more like “somewhere that I visited” rather than “something that I saw”’. Psychological immersion is sometimes referred to as presence, which in its turn is occasionally taken as an abbreviation of telepresence (Biocca, 1997). For a long time, these concepts have been used interchangeably across the literature, with different authors creating their own distinctions between the terms. For example, some writers define presence as ‘the natural perception of an environment’ and telepresence as ‘the mediated perception of an environment’ (Steuer, 1995: 36); while others interpret it as ‘a perceptual illusion of nonmediation’ with immediacy (as a concept) blurred within this definition (Lombard and Ditton, 1997). Furthermore, Lombard and Ditton identified another aspect of immersion – perceptual immersion – the degree to which ‘what you see’ submerges the perceptual system of the user, enabling them to disregard the medium. Frank Biocca, however, objected to describing technology by the degree to which the senses are engaged through the displays of the interface (or vividness) because this ‘confuses independent and dependent variables by defining a property of the interface, the computer, in terms of the effect of this property on the user’ (1997). This is true, but it is also the fundamental flaw in any discussion about the nature of immersion. The objective design of the technologies does not, in itself, determine the degree to which immersion occurs. Though they may be called ‘immersive technologies’ (and indeed greater vividness and more interaction contribute to the potential for ‘being immersed’), immersion is also dependent on a range of other factors separate from the technology. Blocking out sensory input from the real world, for example, also adds to the sense of psychological immersion, but the perception of our real bodies can disrupt it (Murray and Sixsmith, 1999: 318, 327). Since no concrete definitions exist for exploring the aforementioned ideas, it becomes necessary to delineate them within any text, including this one, as well as to clarify the discussions for the reader.

For the purposes of this book, psychological immersion will be defined as the sense of submergence in a space that is not one’s immediate physical environment. Perceptual immersion, in its turn, will be characterized as the degree to which one’s perceptions are dominated by the technology. We will use the word immediacy to describe the perception of non-mediation (or, rather, the lack of perception of mediation). We presume that immediacy is not necessarily synonymous with psychological immersion, as it is, from the experiences of the authors, quite possible without the appearance of non-mediation. For example, when we are in the virtual world Second Life, it is apparent that this world is mediated because we can see an interface, pop-up boxes and, in addition, there may be lag or partial rendering. However, we are accustomed to these interferences, so they are not impediments to the sensation of being drawn into that world, which makes psychological immersion possible. We will accept that defining technologies by their impact on the viewer is problematic (taking Biocca’s line of argument), but will still employ the term immersiveness in the understanding that this is merely an objective measure of the degree of vividness and interactivity of a technology and is not automatically related to greater immersion. Furthermore, we will consider immediacy and immersiveness as being distinct, in that immediacy requires a natural or invisible interface, while immersiveness involves breadth and depth of sensory engagement together with interactivity. Although these concepts both contribute to perceptual immersion, they are not identical. We base this judgement on the cases when the user becomes perceptually immersed while engaged with a high-resolution visual environment with surround sound via a ‘visible’ computer interface, but still does not possesses full immediacy. In summary, therefore, we have the following arguably distinct categories:

Psychological immersion – the sense of being submerged in the experience of the environment. It occurs, for example, when we watch a television programme and become emotionally involved in the experiences of the characters, or lose track of time when playing a game, to the extent that we become less aware of our surroundings.

Perceptual immersion – the degree to which the technology dominates the senses, and comprised of immediacy (the lack of perception of mediation) and immersiveness (the objective measure of the vividness [or realism] of the technology, and its degree of interactivity). An example of a completely perceptually immersive environment is Cybersphere at the University of Warwick (https://digital.warwick.ac.uk/Informatics-and-Virtual-Reality/cybersphere.html). It was designed for a variety of applications, including construction, healthcare, training and simulation, ultimately aiming to overcome the inability of a user to move around the virtual environment in a natural way. This hollow 3.5 metre diameter construction allows the visitors to stand and walk inside it, tracking their movements and adjusting the internal projections in response to them (Fernandes et al., 2003: 142). Cybersphere achieves total perceptual immersion in that it completely surrounds the user, and is totally interfaceless. While contributing to psychological immersion, perceptual i...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Introduction
• Part 1: Spaces, presence, realities …
• Part 2: Creating virtual spaces
• Part 3: Experiencing virtual spaces
• Part 4: Making sense of space – the practitioner perspective
• Part 5: Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Index