This chapter represents the views of practitioners working in virtual worlds on how to make sense of them. It looks into a variety of physical and virtual locations and their applicability to be used for performance practices. It investigates the willingness of the participants to be transformed by such spaces and by the technologies used, and examines the relationships between the viewer and performance and between virtual and physical realities. The authors conclude that nowadays the boundaries between those realities are becoming blurred, with audiences becoming fully incorporated into the performance and with the technology becoming more integrated with them.

The concluding chapter of this book revisits such an important issue as immersiveness and how it influences the way we communicate and interact with and within virtual worlds. It looks into how physical spaces translate into digital and virtual spaces, impacting on our emotions, learning and creativity. Here, the authors define what space actually means in the context of their work, emphasizing the importance of its design, accessibility, sustainability, and the intentions of its producers. They discuss the collision of virtual and physical worlds, which creates a new synthesis but also raises the question of who is responsible for managing digital footprints. The chapter concludes with the coining of a new term – ‘phyrtual’ – which describes a new type of reality we are facing, where our physical bodies are constantly extended throughout the virtual.

This chapter builds upon the idea of virtual spaces requiring an engagement of belief in order for the participant to be fully engaged with them. The concepts of semiotic social spaces, magic circles, game spheres and lusory attitude are introduced, and the similarities and complementarities of these ideas applicable to a variety of spaces (virtual worlds, theatrical spaces, games and ritual spaces) are explored. Metaxis, engagement, immersion and how these contribute to flow are also discussed. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the third set of concepts, those of crossing over between spaces, which include the idea of liminality, or a membrane. It concludes with a discussion of the concept of a dichotomy between apparent and actual intent in crossing into a game sphere.

This first chapter examines the ways in which we use virtual worlds for communication, learning and creative practices, applying two different theoretical approaches to describe the process of adapting spaces from one medium to another. It looks into the history of virtual spaces and the evolution of new media technologies, providing definitions of terms used frequently to describe the digitality of our everyday experiences. Some of these terms have a multitude of definitions or became interchangeable in the literature, leading to some confusion among researchers. Here, we attempt to clarify, explain and, in places, even redefine some of these terms, aiming at establishing a more coherent approach to researching technological evolution and the emergence of virtual spaces.

This chapter investigates how existing cultural forms are redefined (and sometimes reinvented) through digital technologies. It looks into how the relationship between the artist, the viewer and the artefact has changed over recent years. The chapter examines an ongoing conflict between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘material’ in the museum environment, which has forced the definition shift of what exhibition spaces are and how the public perceives them. It analyses such factors as credibility and intellectual transparency when constructing a virtual heritage environment or when creating a 3D reconstruction of a historical artefact. It also discusses the importance of virtual presence for cultural heritage institutions and their approaches (and challenges) to addressing the issues of personalization, sharing and user feedback. The case study presented in this chapter attempts to address the problem of detachment between the viewer and the artefact by placing intangible historical events of the 1831 Nottingham Riots in context within immersive virtual spaces.

This chapter looks at two case studies which demonstrate the impact that experience of space has on the performance and learning of students in virtual worlds. The case studies are placed within the context of prevailing attitudes and understanding of virtual worlds’ education over the period in which they were conducted. In the first of these case studies, learners were taken on a field visit to a range of theatrical spaces in Second Life. Their experiences are described using the terms defined and clarified in Chapter 1, and demonstrate the importance of engagement of belief (and time inworld to develop this engagement) for creating fully a sense of place within those spaces. The second case study is set within a simulation of a disaster management communication exercise, and indicates that intent and motivation are key factors in creating emotional agency as well as, in this case, realism. Here, too, the distinction between immediacy and immersion is key to understanding the way in which space is made sense of within virtual worlds.

This chapter investigates the effect digital technologies have on theatre, reconfiguring its aesthetics and challenging conventional audience–performance interaction. It analyses virtual reality as a space for theatre-making and attempts to answer the question of how the use of technology and artistic creativity can be balanced, in order to prevent the storyline from disappearing behind the ‘new media decorations’. It is argued that technologies of computation offer a vast range of powerful tools for experiencing the art of theatre; however, it is emphasized that theatre-makers should identify the desired level of interactivity to maintain the feeling of the spectators’ immersion and engagement with the performance. The case study presented here examines the 3D visualization of a scenographic artefact (Norman Bel Geddes’ 1921 visualization of Dante’s The Divine Comedy) as research methodology, bridging the gap between past and present theatre practices.

This chapter introduces and describes the idea of first, second and third places. It elaborates on the discussion in the preceding chapter of there being a set of spaces in which engagement of belief is integral to sense-making within them, and brings it into a single coherent frame through the introduction of the concept of a ‘fourth place’. The characteristics of fourth places are delineated using the framework of extended Activity Theory proposed in Chapter 5. In fourth places, the situated experience of the space is characterized by an engagement of belief, and an experience of metaxis, a splitting of awareness into apparent and actual intent. The tools of this engagement are a set of boundary objects and practices that mark the space as a highly structured semiotic space. These spaces are also specifically ‘about’ something, and this aligns both their design and the intent of the people that enter them. Both rules governing behaviour and the roles of participants are transformed by entry to these spaces, and this transformation is both legitimized by the space and by the rationale for entering the space. A sense of shared community also typifies these spaces. The concept of a fourth place is thus presented here as a novel way to classify the type of space, which both draws together the strengths of previous ways of characterizing spaces and also normalizes them as an extension of other places with which we are familiar.

This chapter outlines how various devises are used for the interpretation of our activities into digital data and discusses the paradigm shifts between traditional interface design and design for virtual environments. It explores various technology applications and software applicable to creating, preserving and maintaining virtual spaces, raising the issue of their sustainability. Furthermore, the chapter touches upon the platforms (present and future) we use for generating and managing online content, navigating digital spaces and personifying computer software processes. It discusses a set of design principles crucial for generating educational and cultural activities in virtual worlds and for the research into and dissemination of cultural heritage via computer-based visualization.

This chapter describes the ways in which digital and virtual spaces are experienced. It argues that the open exploration of spaces and the temporary and random encounters within them give rise to the sense of virtual worlds as being an inhabited place. The chapter discusses the emotional agency with which we imbue spaces and introduces the concept that virtual places require the engagement of belief. This concept is accompanied by a discussion of Activity Theory and its use as a framework to describe the elements and context for experience. The omissions of Activity Theory in its role in understanding the experience of virtual worlds are identified as the situated experience of being in the space, and as the aspects of identity that are employed within that space. These are found in the concepts informing the Communities of Practice model and so a mash-up of these two frameworks is suggested, named extended Activity Theory.