Reality Effect
Sigur Rós - Fjögur píanó
You are in a car. Or are you? You see the car and scenery out the window. Your stomach feels the acceleration. You smell the gasoline and feel the leather seat and seatbelts. But what if you actually aren’t in a car? You are actually sucking on a drugged lollipop, wearing a blindfold, and sitting on a lawn chair in an underground parking lot.
A reality effect – the feeling when a simulation – a machine, a film, an optical illusion – creates an experience that successfully convinces your body and mind to believe as reality. The reality effect convinces the person experiencing the illusion that the simulated or reproduced experience is legitimate. The effect is achieved if the senses react in a manner equivalent to how they would react to the actual experience or thing being simulated. Thus, the reality effect is individualized and tailored to each person’s unique perception. What causes a reality effect for one person may not do so for another. The effect can be experienced by a nineteenth-century viewer looking at a stereoscopic image (Crary, 124) or a modern 3D-moviegoer who ducks and flinches when images ‘fly’ out at them from the screen.
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