Into the Nebula: Embodied perception of scenography in virtual environments

Abstract

The introduction of three-dimensional digital imagery as performance sites through the increasing application of virtual reality (VR) technology offers a chance to open discussion about the perception of scenography in digital environments. Consisting solely of pixels, computer-generated settings allow the perceivers to step into the weightless state of physical inexistence in VR and leave the tangible world behind, at least to some extent. At first glance, a perceptual focus on sound and vision may give the impression that we have not moved far from the traditional way of experiencing scenography by simply looking at it. However, a more contemporary understanding of matter as doing, rather than as an innate object, provokes reconsideration of perception in this specific type of environment. While the development of media technology continues to focus on better integration of the human body into virtual reality, I think it can be debated whether the body, loaded with embodied memory of real-world encounters, is the medium to get us there and, if so, in which capacity? Besides fooling the body and our experience of embodiment, could our minds play a different role in our becoming digital beings? Using a variety of examples from the field of VR artistic practices—Analog Studios’ Notget, VRTOV’s The Turning Forest and Tom Crago’s Materials—this essay asks whether the expansion of scenographic horizons is grounded in designers’ capacity to rethink the meaning of matter and to mindfully recalibrate embodiment in order to enable the perceiver to see and feel things differently. I look closely into embodied perception of VR that catapults the perceiver into a vast universe of endless spatial possibilities, a place where potentially the physicality of the body may be exchanged for a scenographic body and the opportunity for active co-creation of digital worlds.