Lecture 8 – Virtual reality / gaming

In the first text, the author Olivier Grau introduce the concept of virtual reality from the beginning of the 20th century to present. From the simple starting idea of artistic immersion in a piece, he explain how the idea of creating a ‘’virtual reality’’ evolved through different medium. While the basic conceptual idea was cherished by artist trying to create immersion for there piece, with time, it interwoven with different disciplines and become centre of interest to peoples from different circles. As technology is often a solution to produce better immersion, creating a ‘’virtual reality’’ became with time of interest to scientist. Military have also developed an interest in virtual reality for different military application with times and also pushed it further. Later, development of ‘’virtual reality’’ also caught attention of the economic circle. The interest and investment from all these different circle helped push research and development in the field of virtual reality in different directions. In the final part of the text present the important and recent impact of computer on the development of better virtual reality. With popularity of computer the next step in development of better virtual reality appears to be the symbiosis of machine and man, a concept cherished by major early computer scientist. All in all, Olivier Grau present virtual reality as a concept of great popularity and interest.

In the second reading of the week, Celia Pearse present and introduce the recent field of video game theories. The author explain some basic misunderstanding of the field and present some of it basic concepts. In the text, videogames seems to impose themselves as a new medium because of there original narrative. Later in the text, the author introduce this new narrative through the example of two popular games (‘’everquest’’ and ‘’the sims’’). After reading the second text, we realize how many concept of videogame are close to some goal of virtual reality initial concept. Videogames impose themselves as one the best contemporary virtual reality.

In conclusion, I would like to lightly give my disapproval of Celia Pearse inappropriate mocking of Harrison Ford (the male model of my youth) actor skills. (very good reading the one on videogames)