Dr Melanie Chan

The idea of virtual realities has a long and complex historical trajectory, spanning from Plato's concept of the cave and the simulacrum, to artistic styles such as Trompe L'oeil, and more recently developments in 3D film, television and gaming. However, this book will pay particular attention to the time between the 1980s to the 1990s when virtual reality and cyberspace were represented, particularly in fiction, as a wondrous technology that enabled transcendence from the limitations of physical embodiment. The purpose of this critical historical analysis of representations of virtual reality is to examine how they might deny, repress or overlook embodied experience. Specifically, the author will contend that embodiment is a fundamental aspect of immersion in virtual reality, rather than something which is to be transcended. In this way, the book aims to challenge distorted ideas about transcendence and productively contribute to debates about embodiment and technology. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/virtual-reality-9781501308642/#sthash.lpPeTNyQ.dpuf

Ultimately, the book illuminates how our sense of shared, objective reality changes due to hybrid forms of reality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between embodiment, presence and immersion in contemporary forms of VR. The term virtual reality (VR) refers to the generation of three-dimensional environments using computer-graphics or 360° video imagery. Using VR headsets such as Google Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear and Sony PlayStation™ (PSVR) it is possible to remove visual stimuli from the outside world, replacing them with computer-generated or video imagery, to create a sense of being present within another realm. At present, commercially available hand-held devices such as motion controllers do not replicate the weight, solidity or surface texture of objects. However, these hand-held devices do enable us to interact and respond to objects within VR environments and add to the sense of immersion. A key issue to explore is what happens to our sense of embodiment, when we feel immersed and present within VR environments? Debates surrounding phenomenological approaches to embodiment, as well as the ideas found within dance and movement scholarship, provide useful entry points to explore embodiment and VR. For instance, Rudolph Von Laban provides a precise lexicon for describing movement. By testing out and applying Laban’s movement analysis, it is possible to offer fresh insight into embodiment, immersion and VR. Furthermore, by focusing on Laban’s insights into movement, it is possible to heighten our sense of embodiment in order to become more aware of how we interact and respond immersive VR experiences.

In this paper we decode virtual people and digital labour within the Higher Education (HE) sector. Virtual people can be produced by motion-capture recordings of human physical movements and speech patterns (to create a virtual twin or clone) or by animating digital imagery. In some cases, human operators write scripts which are then presented by virtual people, but in other cases they are autonomously animated through artificial intelligence programs (Schroeder and Craig, 2021). Our research relates to learning, life and work pedagogy series since virtual people are more than just software programmes embedded in chatbots or digital assistant devices because they have an uncanny resemblance to human beings (Pillai, R. et al., 2023). Instead, their uncanny resemblance to human beings is crafted for commercial purposes to perform their roles, which may displace or replace human labour and social interaction. The use of virtual people in Higher Education is promoted as offering staff and students benefits such as speed, efficiency and convenience. However, the use of virtual people in such roles raises important questions about privacy, misinformation, and exploitation (Putoni, 2021). Our research seeks to interrogate the implications, opportunities and risks arising from the use of virtual people to perform tasks and services currently performed by human workers such as lecturers, professional and support staff. To do so, we will draw on debates in critical theory surrounding the fourth industrial revolution (Schwab, 2016; 2017) cognitive capitalism, labour studies and creativity (Fuchs, 2021, Johannesen, 2018; Jarret, 2019; Lee 2022). There are now several synthetic media companies who produce virtual people including Colossyan, Hour One, Rephrase AI, Synthesia, Soul Machines and UneeQ. Notably these synthetic media companies create software that mimics social interaction and makes these technological systems available to public and private sector organisations around the world. Virtual people are already used in HE, for example, Maryville University in the US uses two digital life coaches Mya and Emma to guide new and prospective students (https://magazine.maryville.edu/meet-emma-and-mya/). In addition, Adtalem, a commercial global education provider uses virtual people to create training content for therapists. Synthesia has also produced a video featuring virtual people for Bolton College in the UK about the importance of student attendance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iho99u1JH_I). We will also create and evaluate learning and teaching content using the technical walk-through method of data collection and analysis (Light, Burgess and Duguay, 2018). This will involve making field notes, analysing screen shots and critically examining software features (design, layout) and functions (menu options). Keywords Artificial sociality, virtual people, digital labour, higher education

This chapter explores some of the affinities and differences between the affective movement of cinematic spectatorship and virtual reality through selected examples and deployment of theoretical frameworks concerning communication, representation, and simulation (Benjamin, 1969; Baudrillard, 1997; McLuhan, 1997). In this chapter, we acknowledge how virtual reality is embedded within social, cultural, and historical contexts alongside other reality media such as linear perspective, photography, cinema, and television (Boulter, Engberg and MacIntyre 2021). Previous studies of virtual reality documentaries provide a useful overview of their affinities with cinema especially in relation to narrative, characterisation, camera work, point of view and empathic connections with audiences (Bolmer, 2017; Nash, 2018; Hassan, 2020). To extend this existing corpus of work, we refer to Benjamin’s view that ‘the relation between the body of the audience and the image on the screen is no longer only by optical means, but by the entire body’ (Mourenza, 2020:53). Rather than examining cinema as a primarily audio-visual experience, we consider how the movement of the camera and sequential flow of screen images can be regarded as eliciting kinaesthetic, affective experiences for the spectator. At the same time, we investigate physicality and affect in relation to how user-participants move through VR simulations using software and hardware which enable ‘magical’ forms of movement such as teleportation, jumps and flying (Nilsson et al, 2018).