In Your Face. An inquiry into historical and contemporary conditions of Virtual Reality

Abstract

This thesis investigates the conditions in which virtual reality (VR) has been developing during the first half of 2017. The introduction of a variety of head-mounted display VR systems to the consumer market in 2015 and 2016 has revamped attention to this technology, and with it visions of it being nascent future medium. However, wild expectations have met with obvious and more fundamental issues. From the combined vantage points of social construction of technology and media history, prominent contemporary issues are situated in the context of their historical precedence. Respondents from various Dutch companies involved in the development of VR technology and content creation were interviewed. Additionally, discourse from the first half of 2017 and the historically proximate relevant period of the early 1990s were analysed. From this emerging cultural protocols are found and conditions in the orders of the semiotic and epistemic can be derived. Contemporary disputes over 360 video and ‘real VR’ bring to the fore how meaning is inscribed into VR as a medium. Epistemic conditions of physiology and the nauseating effects that have been experienced while using VR are found to be at odds with views on computer graphics. Additionally, it is shown how the topos of evoking immersive experience has been interpreted flexibly throughout history. Visions of how VR should be put to use — as a tool to enhance efficiency or as the ultimate form of escapism — are put to the fore as a site of contest in terms of cultural protocols. Amid dystopian and utopian visions, this thesis offers critical insights into the evolution of VR as cultural form. As a historically-informed snapshot, this thesis thus aims to be of use to the future media historian.