Sep 6, 1992 1. My initial feeling was pretty much what i expected - coming face to interface with the Myth of VR was of more moment than the quality of the experience - partly because it wasn't extensive VR-to-body interface and also 'cause it was basically just another computer game (you didn't walk around, you stood in a ring which sensed which way you were facing, where your head was pointed and where your right hand was pointed - you moved forward by pressing a button. In your hand was a grenade launcher and it was basically a high noon between you and your doppelganger - with a few predatory pterodactyls hanging around). The stereo 3-dimensionality was something you barely noticed unless you made a point of waving the gun around in front of your face (or rather the 3D was tangible but it seemed sort of unnecessary and you soon forgot about it because you got sucked into the ultra-violence). What was missing was the feeling of being able to go for a walk with your real legs - this would do a lot to psyche you into the image rather than feel this was just a rather exhausting way to operate a video game - as would more peripheral vision. Also the game scenario takes you out of an experiential exploratory state of mind - tho it does push you to make your way around the space a lot and become fluent with the control of your cyberself. PS ref: this was Virtual Reality Corporation's "Dactyl Nightmare" 2. I'm continuing this topic to work out some thoughts prompted by my recent VR experience and seeing Lawnmower Man. I'd not put a lot of of stock in the overhyped VR age, writing it off as another form of illusionism whose new dimensionality might eventually, after the initial exploratory contact, be seen as superfluous and go the way of 3D movies, scratch+smell odorama etc. My VR experience didn't do much to dispel this feeling. There seemed to be quite a gap between this and the true-alternate-reality ethos embraced in Lawnmower Man. All the jiggling couches and spinning cyclotrons ridden in the film seemed only to reinforce the idea that VR development was all about developing the FEEling of being IN cyberspace which seemed only to underline the reality that you weren't really in it at all (ie your 'real' body was being pushed around by plain old 'real' machinery). Unless perhaps the "reality" of VR rested upon subjective *belief* - or the suspension of disbelief - in the illusion, under influence of sustained experience of the illusion-world. You could argue that if an *active* stimulus comes from within the VR generating program and the jolt of the couch is *reactive* then perhaps you can begin an argument for the VR world having an integrity (a being of its own) equal to that of the realworld. I've begun to reappraise the true-alternate-reality view a bit on considering what realworld reality is anyway. The REAL Realworld is in fact unexperienceable. Its merely an illusionistic construction put together by fairly vague influences upon certain sense receptors and translated into sensations by our own internal neural network, from which we each construct our own realworld environment. Its just another illusion created by our own nervous systems. SO - what I want to do here is look at ideas supporting or challenging the premise that VR is the formation of a new reality, leading to innumerable human-invented realities as real as this one. Cases for or against, speculations on meaning and purpose (did we appear in this reality to forge more realities?).Are there already infinite realities? How it would all work...etc. 3. To quote myself: >Unless perhaps the "reality" of VR rested upon >subjective *belief* - or the suspension of disbelief - in the illusion under influence of sustained experience of the illusion-world. You could argue >that if an *active* stimulus comes from within the >VR generating program and the jolt of the couch is >*reactive* then >perhaps you can begin an argument >for the VR world having an integrity (a being of its >own) equal to that of the realworld. So if you have 'real' VR worlds, can you be in them? Or just interface with them? You appear to have virtual hands but actually its your hands triggering devices to direct the V-hands. The fact that the V-hands move around in a similar way and position in front of your V-view as would your real hands in front of your face promotes an illusion that they are your hands. So is belief the key to "entering" cyberspace? Belief sustained by convincing illusion (you're convinced, you believe). You *forget* you're on the pneumatic couch or in the cyclotron. Again the best way to argue this is not FOR your VR world, but AGAINST your realworld. Most of the time we *forget* the room we're in, what the words we read 'look' like, what all the symbols 'look' like; and we 'see' only what they mean or represent. Reading a book creates a VR in your head which your are 'in' as long as you forget you are reading, or that you are you reading. Well hey, most of the time you don't even remember you are you! This leads us (well it leads me) to the Castenadas question - that is you can fly or stand on the side of a cliff or walk out the revolving door of a department store and come out the other side in the desert if you believe it works. Or in broader magic terms, a sustained ritual delivers trance state, which disappears the subject's reality or aspects of that reality which inhibit him from achieving the will or belief needed for mind over matter or mind over other mind magic. Think i lost the plot there... can you relate or use VR with magic? Or is VR a sort of magic? (hmmmm mind over matter). What about the shaman's journey into psycho-archetypal space? Am I only in this reality because I believe it? © David Nerlich 1992
