Proceedings Article | 22 February 2008
KEYWORDS: Virtual reality, Sensors, Consciousness, Visualization, Brain, Head-mounted displays, Nervous system, Receptors, Computer simulations, Cognition
Virtual Reality (VR), especially in a technologically focused discourse, is defined by a class of hardware and software,
among them head-mounted displays (HMDs), navigation and pointing devices; and stereoscopic imaging. This
presentation examines the experiential aspect of VR. Putting "virtual" in front of "reality" modifies the ontological status
of a class of experience-that of "reality." Reality has also been modified [by artists, new media theorists, technologists
and philosophers] as augmented, mixed, simulated, artificial, layered, and enhanced. Modifications of reality are closely
tied to modifications of perception. Media theorist Roy Ascott creates a model of three "VR's": Verifiable Reality,
Virtual Reality, and Vegetal (entheogenically induced) Reality. The ways in which we shift our perceptual assumptions,
create and verify illusions, and enter "the willing suspension of disbelief" that allows us entry into imaginal worlds is
central to the experience of VR worlds, whether those worlds are explicitly representational (robotic manipulations by
VR) or explicitly imaginal (VR artistic creations). The early rhetoric surrounding VR was interwoven with psychedelics,
a perception amplified by Timothy Leary's presence on the historic SIGGRAPH panel, and the Wall Street Journal's tag
of VR as "electronic LSD." This paper discusses the connections-philosophical, social-historical, and psychological-perceptual
between these two domains.
