How do the theatre makers PIPS: lab and Urland/CREW investigate Stefano Gualeni’s concept that virtual reality is an ‘ontological tool’ that redefines human-technology relationships?
Summary
This thesis offers a critical and philosophical reflection on how the theatre makers PIPS:lab,
Urland and CREW use virtual reality as an “ontological tool”, a term coined by Italian game designer
and philosopher Stefano Gualeni in his text Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools: How to
Philosophize with a Digital Hammer (2015). The research decodes the fragments of ontology in relation
to Heideggerian philosophy and additional postphenomenological ideas that are divided between two
sub-topics: Space and the body. These two thematic guidelines identify how the theatre makers use
specific framing techniques to blur or expose how technology frames our own ontological reality, which
Gualeni defines as a transition from traditional ontologies to virtual ontologies (Gualeni 2015). The
research hypothesises that virtual realities potential as an ontological tool reveals the human necessity
to have agency, feel present and understand the mechanics of one’s own virtual reality experience; in
order to escape any applied definition of existential dread to the contextualisation of human-technology
relationships.