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Technosense and Sensibilia: Haptic Interfaces, Selfhood, and Obstruction in Virtual RealityMain MenuIntroductionThe Cognitive Neuroscientific ApproachThe Threshold for Haptic EngagementMultisensory Experience and the Mistaken Body ProblemBodily ProsthesisThe Danger of IllusionObstructionThe Theoretical ApproachSelfhood and the SensesHaptic EngagementThe Experience of Virtual RealityWorks CitedJustin Gil94c47de2aaac7843570bcc43b3442787b5fca97e
Conclusions
12016-05-04T23:04:38-07:00Justin Gil94c47de2aaac7843570bcc43b3442787b5fca97e95544image_header2016-05-05T00:58:35-07:00Justin Gil94c47de2aaac7843570bcc43b3442787b5fca97eVirtual reality has been an object of theoretical and cognitive neuroscientific inquiry for no less than thirty years, and it has been a central motif in science fiction for even longer. Now that the technology has arrived in forms that are (more) accessible, the lack of pointed literature is all the more glaring. Even more pressingly, a fundamental gap exists between applicable theoretical approaches—haptic visuality, phenomenology, the ontology and epistemology of the self, subject/object relations, etc.—and relevant work in the sciences.
Theorists such as Marsha Kinder and Laura Marks have incorporated the neurocognitive approach in some measure. What is, even more than other media, a technology with implications for sensory perception and neural processes, requires an even greater degree of disciplinary interchange. On the side of cognitive neuroscience, studies on touch and sensory perception are extensive, but their applications to virtual reality are speculative and analogous at the moment. On the side of media theory, the arguments lapse all too often into abstraction.
Virtual reality promises to change completely the experience of immersive, sensory-rich media. It is, truly, a transformative technology. As such, it requires innovative scholarship. The introduction centered in large part on the concept of obstruction. Obstruction is not, it should be evident by now, a localized problem in virtual reality or a simple result of the apparatus, but instead virtual reality’s defining feature, its structuring contradiction/condition. Virtual reality verges ever closer to total immersion even as it elucidates elemental divides in the thinking and sensing subject in relation to the world.
