On Jonas' account, then, VEs generate an effect of presence or "reality” because they correlate a “virtual” perceptual stimulus with a “real” motor response (although one directed inward, toward the dynamics of proprioceptive space). The priority Jonas thereby lends to proprioceptively guided self-movement serves to correlate Henri Bergson's defense of affection with the tactile basis of vision. According to Bergson,
The necessity of affection follows from the very existence of perception. Perception, understood as we understand it, measures our possible action upon things, and thereby, inversely, the possible action of things upon us. ... our perception of an object distinct from our body, separated from our body by an interval, never expresses anything but a virtual action. But the more distance decreases between this object and our body, ... the more does virtual action tend to pass into real action. Suppose the distance reduced to zero, that is to say that the object to be perceived coincides with our body, that is to say again, that our body is the object to be perceived. Then it is no longer virtual action, but real action, that this specialized perception will express, and this is exactly what affection is. Our sensations are, then, to our perceptions that which the real action of our body is to its possible, or virtual, action. (Bergson, 57)
What Jonas's analysis adds to this account is an explicit privileging of the tactile. Whereas Bergson deploys the irreducibility of affection as a means to differentiate virtual and real action (vision and touch), Jonas shows that every perceptual experience (vision included) must lead back to an action of the body on itself (self-movement). On his account, infratactilitythe body's action on itself—makes the virtual actual. With its forceful emphasis on the tactile basis for all perceptual experience, Jonas' work (here in full resonance with the later Merleau-Ponty) thus clarifies how the reality-generating potential (or virtuality) of embodied self-movement can be lent to the most schematic artificial environments.
We can now specify precisely what constitutes the uniqueness of Char Davies' deployment of virtual reality technology to create a bodyin-code. Osmose and her more recent Ephémère are designed expressly to catalyze a shift, as well as to compel self-reflexive recognition of the shift, from a predominately visual sensory interface to a predominately bodily or affective interface.xvi The characteristics we earlier singled out in differentiating her work from most other artistic and scientific engagements with VR technology can now be seen to reflect a deeper, properly philosophical dimension of her project. Thus, the diaphanous surfaces, the solicitation of bodily motion and breathing, and the nongoal-oriented nature of the environments do not just form the elements of an alternative approach to three-dimensional design. More centrally, they testify to a more fundamental shift in perceptual sensibility away from the entire Cartesian worldview so central to the development of three-dimensional computer graphics.
EMBODYING VIRTUAL REALITY
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