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Dr Melanie Chan

Senior Lecturer

Melanie Chan's publications include: Digital Reality: The Body and Digital Technologies (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media (Bloomsbury, 2014). She has also published academic journal articles, book chapters and science fiction short stories.

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Melanie Chan

About

Melanie Chan's publications include: Digital Reality: The Body and Digital Technologies (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media (Bloomsbury, 2014). She has also published academic journal articles, book chapters and science fiction short stories.

Melanie Chan's publications include: Digital Reality: The Body and Digital Technologies (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media (Bloomsbury, 2014). She has also published academic journal articles, book chapters and science fiction short stories.

Melanie Chan is a Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Media, Communication Cultures programme at Leeds Beckett University.

Her research interests include virtual reality, mobile media and digital culture. She has also published two monographs: Digital Reality: The Body and Digital Technologies (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media (Bloomsbury, 2014). She has also published 'Environmentalism and The Animated Landscape in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke' as part of the edited collection The Animated Landscape (Bloomsbury, 2015 and ). Other published work includes the chapter 'Place, Play and Privacy: Exploring Location-Based Applications and Spatial Experience' In Digital Futures and the City of Today (Intellect, 2016). She has also published various journal articles.

Research interests

virtual reality, digital technologies, the body in contemporary culture, mobile media.

Publications (20)

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Conference Contribution

Radical Immersions

Featured 06 January 2020 Radical Immersions Watermans Arts Centre London London University of Greenwich/DHRA
Other

The Dreamers

Featured 08 April 2021
Conference Contribution

A Case for Embodiment in Neuromancer

Featured 2008 Literature without Borders University of Leeds
Conference Contribution

Augmented Humans and Synthetically Created Beings

Featured 2009 MECCSA Bradford Media Museum
Conference Contribution

Representations of Post-Human Existence: An Exploration of the Relationships between The Gothic and Japanese Anime in the 21st Century

Featured 2009 21st Century Gothic Symposium St Mary's College
Conference Contribution

Gender Representations of Post-Human Existence in Japanese Anime

Featured July 2009 Gendering East West Conference University of York
Conference Contribution

Filmic Representations of Synthetic Beings: Fantasy or a Forthcoming Reality?

Featured 2010 The Emergence of the Posthuman Subject University of Surrey
Chapter
Twenty-First Century Gothic Representations of Post-Human Existence in Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed Ex-Machina and Vexille'.
Featured 2009 Twenty First Century Gothic Cambridge Scholars Press
AuthorsAuthors: Chan MA, Editors: Cherry B, Ruddell C, Howell P
Journal article

Virtually Real and Really Virtual: Baudrillard's Procession of Simulacrum and The Matrix

Featured July 2008 International Journal of Baudrillard Studies
Journal article

Beings in Japanese Cyberpunk Anime

Featured 2010 Film and Film Culture5:28-51 University of Ulster
Book
Virtual Reality: Representations in Contemporary Media
Featured 30 July 2015 New York Continuum

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

Conference Contribution

A Critical History of Virtual Reality

Featured 2008 International Communications Association McGill University Montreal
Book

Digital Reality The Body and Digital Technologies

Featured 17 September 2020 208 Bloomsbury Academic

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

Journal article
Analysing Movement, The Body and Immersion in Virtual Reality
Featured 06 July 2018 Refractory: a journal of entertainment media Screen and Cinema Studies, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology

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.

Chapter
Place, Play and Privacy: Exploring Location-Based Applications and Spatial Experience.
Featured 15 June 2016 Digital Futures and the City of Today: New Technologies and Physical Spaces Intellect
AuthorsAuthors: Chan MA, Editors: Caldwell GA, Smith C, Clift E
Chapter
Environmentalism and The Animated Landscape in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997)
Featured 27 August 2015 Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function Bloomsbury
AuthorsAuthors: Chan MA, Editors: Pallant C
Conference Contribution

Representations of Embodiment in Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix Trilogy

Featured 2008 Cultural Borrowings University of Nottingham
Conference Proceeding (with ISSN)
Decoding Virtual People and Digital Labour in HE: Technologies, Dynamics and Implications
Featured 01 March 2025 Learning. Life. Work. AMPS Proceedings Series Marey A San Francisco, USA AMPS C.I.O.
AuthorsAuthors: Chan M, Bacchus G, Larkin J, Spark D, Till C, Editors: Marey A

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

Chapter

Kinetics, Cinema and Virtual Reality: Affinities and Differences.

Featured 20 March 2024 From Cinema to Virtual Reality and Back Amsterdam University Press
AuthorsAuthors: Chan M, Tew-Thompson Z, Hodge K, Editors: Ceuterick M, Szita K

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).

Activities (4)

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External examiner / External advisor

Media, Culture, Communication

2022
External examiner / External advisor

Media, Culture, Communication

2022
Journal reviewing / refereeing

Feminist Media Studies

2021
Taylor and Francis
Journal reviewing / refereeing

The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

02 November 2020

Current teaching

BA Hons Media, Communication Cultures, BA Hons Media and English, BA Hons History and Media, MA Media and Culture.

Undergraduate modules include:

  • Connecting with Audiences
  • Understanding Social Media
  • Media Past Present
  • Content Creation and Communication
  • Media Theory
  • Media Professionals' Workshop
  • Researching Media and Culture
  • Digital Media and Culture
  • Storytelling for Social Impact.
  • Dissertation

Postgraduate modules include:

  • The Art of Investigation
  • Mobile Media Cultures
  • Theory into Practice
  • Major Project

Grants (2)

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Grant

Virtual People in Higher Education

Leeds Beckett University - 03 April 2023
The emergence of computer-generated virtual people in the Higher Education workplace has prompted fears of job losses and replacements. The post-covid era of online courses and hybrid learning environments shifts the centrality of co-present aspects of interactions between staff and students on campus. In this context, the use of virtual people becomes foregrounded and raises a series of questions related to affect, appearance, behaviour and actions. Notably virtual people have an uncanny resemblance to human beings; they are more than just software programmes embedded in chatbots or digital assistant devices. For virtual people generate a sense of the uncanny because face animacy perception is linked to qualities of self-awareness in other humans which disrupts our sense of reality and illusion. To highlight these issues, this research seeks to compare and contrast the cognitive, creative and kinaesthetic fluidity of humans and virtual people. It will do so through a series of performative writing workshops using real world scenarios based on staff and student interactions in HE. Three salient research questions will drive this research. Firstly, to what extent will virtual humans impact upon human labour in Higher Education (HE)? Secondly, how effective are they in relation to learning, teaching and professional tasks and services? Thirdly how might staff and students perceive the use of virtual people? This study is significant because Universities are enmeshed with labour market change such as casualisation and precarization. It is in this context that virtual people are framed as a means of reducing labour costs by scaling the production of content for teaching, learning and support whilst maintaining student engagement. However, my research offers a more nuanced and context specific account of the opportunities, challenges and implications arising from using virtual people to perform personal tutoring roles, delivering teaching material and administrative tasks.
Grant

Bodies in-form-ation: experiencing urban spaces through guided walking activities.

British Academy - 04 April 2022
In March 2020, UK lockdown restrictions limited people to going out once per day, in their local area. Yet simultaneously, for many people, it ushered in new-found pleasure in those local, often overlooked spaces and activities. As walking was one of the few activities allowed under government restrictions, it became a daily activity for many urban dwellers, prompting a reconsideration of where they live and their access to green space. This research focuses on experiencing urban spaces during the covid pandemic (2020-onwards). In doing so, the research seeks to address how under-represented inhabitants (older people, asylum seekers and refugees) experience a northern post-industrial city in the UK through walking activities and map-making workshops. Through these activities we will help participants pinpoint and document their experiences and the benefits they gain from taking part in them
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