Char Davies: how the physical can trigger the emotional with technology

Char Davies' article gave me some great ideas for ways to expand my project if I ever had the skills or the tools or the budget.

She says that virtual reality is a place where "our minds may float among three-dimensionally extended yet virtual forms in a paradoxical combination of the ephemerally immaterial with what is perceived and bodily felt to be real."

With my project focusing on memories, decisions, and fictional stories, I picture the way people make connections in their brain. I kind of see it as an "osmose", not of worlds, but of snapshots and home movies in your mind. It's kind of like what Davies says, how it seems to be so real when you think deeply about it, but the memory isn't real and can change every time you think back to it.

If I could make a virtual reality version of my project the viewer would slowly move through white fog uncovering black and white pieces of a past. After a certain amount of time there would be two paths and the body would lean one way or another to choose a direction, showing that it's not all about how you think and compare options, but sometimes just a physical gut feeling. At that point there would be less fog and photos/videos would appear quicker in a more forced way and some color would begin to appear, showing that the specific path you chose is taking it's form in reality and you can't go back. Man, if only I had the equipment.

It is such an awesome thing to think about, because it is not just interactive, but immersive. In our pieces the audience is engaged in the art, but with Osmose the audience is IN the piece.


I like her idea of "dehabituating of perception" and that someone will be receptive to new things rather than defensive. I think that works because of her emphasis that virtual reality needs to have an environment different in some way from our real one. It would be interesting to see if the same effect of tranquility and loss of inhibition from Osmose came over people if the simulation was an exact copy of a a busy city avenue, or if it had to be that same street but without people, or without color, or some other alteration of reality.

Something else I thought about was that if this experience based on the physical movement of the body alters the mental and emotional, can something where the mind leads the experience then make the body act in a certain way?


This video is also interesting because it shows how far you can go with the technology. If you were literally walking and ducking through a virtual space (rather than just leaning like in Davies' piece), imagine how much more you may or may not explore and your piece could be come so much more personal and immersive for the viewer.