In accord with this aim, as Mark Pesce suggests, Davies manages to design a space "that contained no distinct boundaries between self and world," one that functions by engaging vision and touch as irreducibly interlinked sensory modalities, both centered on the bodily sensation that confers reality on all perception. In what he describes as a “direct assault on two fronts," Pesce contends that Davies' work simultaneously changes “what the eye would see" and “how the participant would move through the world" (Pesce, "Cathedrals," 2). The result is a use of the virtual reality interface to catalyze a profoundly affirmative and empowering experience of psychasthenia. That is why, to cite the experience of one participant, at some point in the immersion, “the border between the interface as a symbolized surface and the surface of the physiological body begins to blur."23 As the visual (representational) boundaries between body and world dissolve in favor of an affective contact that foregrounds what Jonas called the“force-experience" characteristic of tactility—internal self-movement synchronized with the visual “perception" of the immaterial—what is brought to the fore is an energetic connection of the body with the world, their primordial indivision.
EMBODYING VIRTUAL REALITY
137