{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title":"Bodies in code  interfaces with digital media","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0415970164","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","id":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","uuid":"4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title":"Bodies in code  interfaces with digital media","normalized_title":"bodiesincodeinterfaceswithdigitalmedia","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0415970164","isbns":["0415970164","0415970156","9780415970167","9780415970150"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":348,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Bodies%20in%20code%20%20interfaces%20with%20digital%20media","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4f7053d9-6508-49c8-9dd8-ec4dc5dadd53/search"},"page":{"printed_page":121,"pdf_page":134,"physical_index":134,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"169d0d0148f06292d5a944f25a26697cd8512b577affb04969f701a6e045c1d5"},"chapter":"bodies in code","content":"Because of its epochē of external force, virtual reality forms something of a laboratory to test the reality-conferring function performed by tactility. Perception of a VE (here no different in kind from perception of a “real” environment, only purified of its material basis) is less an affair of informational pickup than one of channeling external through internal reality: “external reality is disclosed in the same act and as one with the disclosure of my own reality—which occurs in self-action: in feeling my own reality by some sort of effort I make, I feel the reality of the world\" (148, emphasis added).\n\nThe stress on \"effort\" in this last line is significant insofar as it introduces the fundamental role played by voluntary self-movement in the ecology of perception. Although Jonas does lend a certain privilege to touch over sight (though certainly not to the point of suggesting a simple elimination of sight in favor of touch), this privilege stems not so much from touch as a specific sense as it does from its implicit conjunction with movement.xiii Put another way, Jonas' sense ecology involves a certain elevation of touch from a mere sense modality into a crossmodal synthesizing function. The commonplace account of perception as a conjunction of sight and touch is incomplete, Jonas remarks, “so long as touch’ in this combination is taken as just another sense, only qualitatively different from sight, hearing, and smell.\" However, if we include in our understanding of touch the “fact of its being an activity involving motion,\" we add the complement of action to its “receptivity, thus elevating it, as it were, into a “spatial organizer” of the different sense species, “the synthesizer of the several senses toward one common objectivity” (153). The “reality-conferring” effect of touch—of what we might better call tactility—stems from this elevated function; specifically, it results from the “toucher's” newfound capacity to give form to perceptual experience:\n\nThe tactile situation moves to a higher level when the sentient body itself becomes the voluntary agent of that movement which is required for the acquisition of this serial sequence of impression. Then touch passes over from suffering to acting: its progress comes under the control of the percipient, and it may be continued and varied with a view to fuller information. Thus mere touch-impression changes into the act of feeling. There is a basic difference between simply having a tactile encounter and feeling another body. ... The motor element introduces an essentially new quality into the picture: its active employment discloses spatial characteristics in the touch-object which were no inherent part of the elementary tactile qualities. Through the kinesthetic accompaniment of voluntary motion the whole perception is raised to a higher order: the touch qualities become arranged in a spatial scheme, they fall into the pattern of surface, and become elements of form. (139–141)\n\nEMBODYING VIRTUAL REALITY\n\n121","previous_page":120,"next_page":122}