Virtuality, Immersion, Simulacra and Avatars

Virtuality has formally been described as “An aspect of reality that is not material” – Wikipedia, 2009. The virtual side of reality comes with a variety of examples, such as viewing something from Space and virtually how we input ideas about the world around us. The virtual world also, on a large scale, presents games which enable an illusion of fantasy and exploratory to appear. To explore this idea we created virtual postcards on Photoshop to send from Space.

Have a look at http://davinakumal.blogspot.com/ ‘s example of her virtual post card creation.

When it comes to virtuality, looking into the studies from Marie-Laure Ryan is very useful and constructive. The former scholar and critic has written several books and articles on issues regarding narratology, fiction and cyberculture.  Furthermore, she looks at virtual reality and human narrative. In Ryan’s latest book, according to Wikepedia 2009, she “embraces a transmedial definition of narrative based on cognitive premises”.

  Immersion has commonly been defined as “common human activity”. A peer of mine explores the idea that in the late 1980’s and early 90’s goggles and gloves were originally used in order to show an example of a virtual world, which furthermore allows you to see and formally touch the virtual world you are in within immersion. Read further into Davina’s blog, http://davinakumal.blogspot.com/ to see the connection between reality and the virtual element we live in.

Within immersion there is such thing as emotional immersion. This involves the acts of getting attached to books and films in an emotional sense. It should be highlighted that this in fact is a common feature for many people. Similarly, if you have enough going on in your body, you can actually get immersed in that sense. For example the constant training from Athletes.

  

The vast majority of what we know in today’s society originates from our influences from the media, this concept links directly to Simulacra. A simulacrum is an image of representation of someone or something.  





The main, most common example used to relate to this point would be the area and population involved with Disneyland. It is obvious that not in anyway are the events or people real and this was used as a clear distinction of reality, or more so what isn’t reality. The previous point was all explored by Baudrillard, and to continue he in great detail emphasises that Disney as a company enables us to constantly engage with different fantasies and myths which overall create hyper reality. As a whole we all have the ability to create barriers between the reality of our own situation and our extended virtual reality.

Finally, I am going to explore the concept of Avatar. Avatars and immersions are both representations of ones self in an additional world, you are an avatar virtually immerse in another world. The concept of Avatar with regards to computers involves the graphical representation of the user and the user’s alter ego. This itself can link directly to my previous post on representation and identity of ones self created through different media forms.