Virtual Immersivity: some semiotic issues
From Firenze University Press Journal: Aisthesis
Ilaria Ventura Bordenca, University of Palermo
- THE PLACE OF VIRTUALITY
As is well known, technologies, media and digital environments that constitute extended reality have developed at an uneven rate and diffusion. Originally presented as revolutionary in the 1980s-90s, immersive devices of various types have enjoyed moments of enthu-siasm and high sales volume (such as the affordably priced Oculusvisor available on the market since 2016 — now Meta Quest 2) and have become widely established in some sectors (gaming, profes-sional training, design, cinema, cultural heritage, tourism), but have also suffered several slowdowns and produced quite a few disappoint-ments (consider, for instance, two historically distant examples of commercial failures: the Power Glove for Nintendo, from the Eighties, used for the first experiments in virtual haptics, and the Google Glassfor mixed reality, one of the most famous smart glasses1) . This fluctuating trend of immersive devices, only partially due to the technology itself and its cost, is mostly related to the cultural meaning of immersive technology, of the experience it incorporates and enables. When is it used? To do what? Why would one buy a visor, for example, if one is not a gaming enthusiast? Since the 1980s, VR has always seemed to be on the verge of exploding in terms of success, but has experienced ups and downs without yet achieving widespread use. That is, without being compared to a smartphone or other smart objects such as Amazon’s Alexa home devic-es (on which see Finocchi, Perri, Peverini [2020]; Peverini [2021], [2023]) or other digital body-contact devices, such as smartwatches. The Meta Quest 2 visors, as affordable mid-range devices, were designed precisely to make VR an economically accessible experience.However, Meta’s latest product, the Quest Pro, launched in 2022 (a visor with professional market positioning), is a visor for mixed reality. This should not be surprising: due to the difficulties in integrating the VR itself, it has been supplement-ed by the possibility of enjoying augmented real-ity content. Moreover, the design of the Quest Provisor is more streamlined than common visors and looks more like a pair of large glasses. Quest pro’s is a sort of negative identity. It allows us to presuppose something about the value of immer-sivity itself, about the social and cultural meanings of this type of technologies and their use. There are marketing issues involved of course, but it seems to be more a matter of cultural acceptance that is related to the role these immersive devices play within the system of collective and social uses.This kind of phenomena raises a series of interesting theoretical problems that have been discussed in the field of Aesthetics (Dalpozzo, Negri, Novaga [2018]; Pinotti [2021]; Montani [2022]) and with some specific issues that regard Semiotics: the dimension of corporeity and per-ception, the enunciative configuration and the transformation of the point of view, but also the narrative dimension involved in these technolo-gies and their experiences. These are all aspects that concern both a general reasoning on immer-sivity and a reflection on the cultural role of the technical devices that shape it. Our aim here is to highlight some of the issues related to immersive technologies that are relevant for semiotic study as well as underline the theoretical challenges this type of technology poses to the science of signification and the research paths still worth pursuing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Aisthesis-14313
Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14313
