Immersion and Simulation

Digital Media Foundations - MD4004

Definitions:Immersion:

…is a metaphoric use of the experience of submersion applied to representation, fiction or simulation. […] The term is widely used for describing partial or complete suspension of disbelief enabling action or reaction to stimulations encountered in a virtual or artistic environment. (wikipedia)

Simulation:

1. An assumption or imitation of a particular appearance or form; counterfeit; sham.

2. The representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose. (DICTIONARY.COM)

Immersion ‘[T]he reader plunges under the sea (immersion), reaches a foreign

land (transportation), is taken prisoner (being caught in a story, being a captured audience), and loses contact with all other realities (being lost in a book).’ (Ryan, 2001, p. 93).

An effortless, immediate turning of codes into contents, that is achieved through familiar metaphors and aesthetic features.

Elements enhancing immersion:

Coherent narrative plot, consistency, unity Causality Presentation (e.g. twists that make the story more interesting) Inclusion of anthropomorphic beings (facial expressions,

judgments, emotions encourage viewer’s/reader’s identification) Atmosphere and style (operate in a referential way) Representationality: ‘realism’, increased size of screen, detail,

Dolby surround sound, vibrant colours, SFX to attract attention.

Link to article on film and perception: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~dalbers/perception/film.html

Pipilotti Rist- Sip My Ocean (1996)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJhgIcbSEeM

Mirror Stage(body as a Gestalt)

Fragmentation,lack of distinction between ourselvesand others

Symbolic

Imaginary

Jacques Lacan ‘The mirror stage as Formative of the I function, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, 1949.

‘The basis of PW [Possible Worlds] theory is the set-theoretical idea that reality – the sum total of the imaginable – is a universe composed of a plurality of distinct elements, or worlds, and that is hierarchically structured by the opposition of one well-designated element, which functions as the centre of the system, to all the other members of the set. The central element is commonly interpreted as ‘the actual world’ and the satellites as merely possible worlds. For a world to be possible it must be linked to the center by a so-called accessibility relation.’(Ryan, 2001, p. 99)

The ‘Actual World’

Other possible worldsReality

Plato’s aim is to define the ideal governor of the polis (city-state).

380 BC

‘Fiction treats the visit as vacation and mobilizes all the powers of language to strengthen the bond between visitor and the textual landscape.’ (Ryan, 2001, p. 95)

But also… ‘To survive immersion, we must take

oxygen from the surface, stay in touch with reality’ (Ibid, p. 97).

Degrees of Immersion

No immersion (non-communicative work, no engagement/access)

Partial immersion (reading, engaging with a narrative, belief systems)

Total Immersion (dreams, madness, reality)

Nadar (1840) Honoré de Balzac.

“According to Balzac’s theory, all physical bodies are made up entirely of layers of ghostlike images, an infinite

number of leaflike skins laid one on the top of the other. Since Balzac believed

man was incapable of making something material from an apparition, from

something impalpable - that is, creating something from nothing - he concluded

that every time someone had his photograph taken, one of the spectral layers was removed from the body and

transferred to the photograph. Repeated exposures entailed the

unavoidable loss of subsequent ghostly layers, that is, the very essence of life.”

Nadar (Tournachon, Gaspar, F) (1900) ‘Nadar: My Life as a Photographer, An Excerpt’, Photography in Print, Vicky Goldberg (ed.), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp. 127-8.

eXistenZ (1999) – Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAdbdUt_h9M

Jean Baudrillard - Hyperreality

“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 2)

Orders of Simulacra 1. Before the Industrial Era:

- Cultural production that works to ‘counterfeit’ nature

- Signs are tied to social hierarchies 2. Industrial Era:

- Mass production, reproduction (no longer imitation of nature) - technology producing but also

reproducing signs and objects 3. The Order of Simulation/Simulacra:

- there are only models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences.

The Order of Simulation/Simulacra

Reality itself no longer presupposed starts being perceived as a construct.

We have lost touch with nature and the goods we consume.

Codes (local or global signifiers) take us beyond physical reality. Society is increasingly represented and presents itself as a binary code.

Computer modeling designs and tests objects through imaginary scenarios that predict and even shape events

America’s Army America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project) is

a series of video games and other media developed by the United States Army. America's Army has "grown in ways its originators couldn't have imagined". Dozens of government training and simulation applications using the America's Army platform have been developed to train and educate U.S. Army soldiers. America's Army has also been used to deliver virtual soldiering experiences to participants at events, such as air shows, amusement parks, and sporting events around the country. The America's Army series has also been expanded to include versions for Xbox, and mobile applications published through licensing arrangements.

http://www.break.com/game-trailers/game/americas-army-3/americas-army-3-trailer

Scenes from the ‘game’ andNew York Army National Guard Celebrates Birthday of America's Army (2011)

Automated News Bulletin (2008)

Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents the content to its audience using avatars and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual."

http://infolab.northwestern.edu/projects/news-at-seven/

“News At Seven is a system that automatically generates a virtual news show. Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to artificial anchors for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.

The hardware is authoritarian: it defines meaning through priorities, prohibitions, privileges and handicaps. It eludes control from the user and structures communication from within.

This is not noticeable because: Content, simulation, GUIs and protection software

(protected mode) conceal underlying power structures. They provide the illusion of interactivity, openness and user-friendliness through software, but they restrict and control what a user can do.

Binary code is only read by machines

Friedrich Kittler, 1997

Software/hardware and Information Materialism

The Posthuman “This age of high technology, in which the human body is no longer

tied to ‘nature,’ but is […] increasingly open to technological design and modification, and in which the notion of the human is relentlessly called into question, might be called posthuman.”

(Gane and Beer 2007, p. 116)

New aesthetics and forms of subjectivity born out of the interface between bodies and computer-based technologies

Cyborg Citizenships and Posthuman democracy

“What it means to be human […] is about how to create just societies in a transnational global world that may include in its purview both carbon and silicon citizens” (Hayles 2005, p. 148)

Politics of Nature and Science

At which point can human life be recognised as such?

How do we define ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’ in a world where humans need to compete with machines?

Katherine Hayles ‘Embodied Virtuality’

The Media and Body Image

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U&feature=more_related

Evolution is an advertising campaign launched by Unilever in 2006 as part of its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, to promote the newly created Dove Self-Esteem Fund

Gracie Kendal (or Kristine Schomaker) "1000 Avatars"

New Settings: Second Life

Gracie's current work explores online identity with the construction of Avatars. 

Her work as a whole stands as an allegory of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion, belief and reality. She basically takes photos of people and turns them into avatars though second life. http://1000avatars.wordpress.com/artist-bio/

Publishing Party

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfa72KNwnwE

Gracie speaking about the origin of her idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kl_XshkvdU

Other projects

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcq4pnY3xP0

Blade Runner Leon & Mr Holdenhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbS_dxHbfA&feature=related

Blade Runner (1982) - Opening Scenehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaR5wVL9x2I

Hal 9000 VS Dave - Ontological scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwBmPiOmEGQ

Philosophy and the Matrix – Baudrillard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3tr0gSNBx4

Matrix Trailer (1999)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8e-FF8MsqU

Reality and simulacra blur.

Machines increasingly communicate with other machines, structure social life and shape lived environments.

New configurations of ‘virtual power’

Distinctions between humans-animals, organisms-machines, physical and non-physical are no longer secure. We need to re-think what ‘human’ and ‘social’, ‘human values’, ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’ are.

What are the implications to our narratives?

New Realisms HD, 3D, Computer Generated Graphics (CGI), Special Effects

(SFX) Narrative complexity is sacrificed. Blockbusters are calculated

exercises in profit-making: expensive presentation and effects, pure show.

Paradox: New visual realism, based on the wizadry of CGI that reintroduces the least cinematic form, animation, back into the mainstream. (e.g. Avatar)

New Settings for immersion and limitations

Virtual environments, social media, the web, provide new settings for art and narratives. In interactive environments we have many different narratives depending on the user. The programme itself is not a representation of a sequence of events.

Nevertheless, through restrictions and the absence of Free Will the distinction often made between experiences, individuals or "selves" is largely artificial or arbitrary.

Depthlessness: the illusory potential provided captures the surface appearance of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp3ARRzNnGc&list=PLF7906B02811AD6B5&index=6

‘Virtual reality’ principles being transferred to other genres

It influences what we consider more relevant, more current. What represents us here and now.

Reality TV shows such as The Big Brother House which are social simulations

Loose narratives, lack of narrative coherence, no illustration of underlying relations.

Ryan Trecartin “Composed using widely available editing software (his first films

were edited on iMovie), Trecartin’s films flicker like straight-to-tape renditions of an oversaturated world. They star tribes of kids and tricksters whose speech is articulate yet schizophasic, a patois of home-brewed slang, corporate buzzwords and chat-room inanities that blend and stutter like the unmediated mutterings of the digital unconscious. These films appear to be about as narrative-led as a computer meltdown, but they are undeniably compelling”

(http://www.thewhitereview.org/art/ryan-trecartin-the-real-internet-is-inside-you/)

I-Be Area (2007) http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_area.html

P.opular S.ky (section ish) (2009)http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_popular.html

Bibliography Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gane, N. and Beer, B. (2008) ‘Simulation’, in New Media: The Key Concepts, Oxford: Berg. Hayles, N.K. (2005) My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kittler, F. (1997) Literature, Media, Information Systems. Amsterdam: G+A Arts. Lacan, J. (1949) ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function, as Revealed in

Psychoanalytic Experience’, Écrits: a Selection, Bruce Fink (trans.), New York: Norton, 2004. Macluhan, M. (2001), ‘The Medium is the Message’, in Understanding Media: The

Extensions of Man, London: Routledge, pp. 7-23. Nadar (Tournachon, Gaspar, F) (1900) ‘Nadar: My Life as a Photographer, An Excerpt’,

Photography in Print, Vicky Goldberg (ed.), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp. 127-8.

Plato (c. 380 BC) ‘Plato, The Republic, Chapter XXV, The Allegory of the Cave’, in The Narrative Reader, Martin Macquillan (ed.), London: Routledge.

Ryan, L. M. (2001), ‘The Text as World: Theories of Immersion’, in Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 89-114.