Introduction
From the Image to the Power of Imaging: Virtual Reality and the "Originary" Specularity of Embodiment
- ALL REALITY IS MIXED REALITY
According to a recent article in The New York Times, the (near) future of television will witness a triumphant conquest of virtual reality, a realm of experience that, with its cumbersome gear and prohibitive costs, we have grown accustomed to considering as distinct from normal perceptual reality.¹ Though we “see the world in three dimensions," the article notes, “throughout most of history, we've only been able to depict it in two." While this Achilles heel of representationalism has long inspired experiments involving perceptual trickery—and indeed might be credited as inspiration for an entire tradition in Western art—only in the past half century has scientific and artistic attention focused on the total simulation of perceptual reality, on the projection of images in three dimensions. The fruit of this attention, however, has recently undergone a minor revolution, as the article explains:
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