VR as a picturing medium

Abstract

In the previous chapter I framed the investigation of VR historically, in terms of previous attempts by artists to remediate the experience of space, particularly through the pictorial technique of linear perspective. VR has several technical advantages over the linear perspective associated with Alberti and Brunelleschi, including its animation of objects and spaces, the dynamism of the viewer’s perspective on those spaces, the binocularity of their visual perspective, and indeed different perceptual modalities—hearing, touch, proprioception—which all add to the realistic spatial impression we associate with VR. Via the visual techniques alone, VR media make what seems to be a novel contribution to experiential remediation: in VR, the user takes an apparent position within depictive space, in that the virtual perspective constitutes a spatial anchor or index, or a pictorial “here.” Thus, suddenly, the notion of something being pictorially to your left or to your right, or behind or before you makes sense. This differs profoundly from earlier cases of depiction, where the user’s placement and perceptual orientation are not embodied in the spatial configuration of the depictive surface. What results, I suggest, is a kind of egocentric picturing.