The Aesthetics Of Virtual Reality

This is the first book to present an aesthetics of virtual reality media. It situates virtual reality media in terms of the philosophy of the arts, comparing them to more familiar media such as painting, film and photography. When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality of virtual items and worlds, about the value of such things, and indeed, about how they may reshape our understanding of the "real" world. Grant Tavinor finds that approach to be fundamentally mistaken, and that to really account for virtual reality, we must focus on the medium and its uses, and not the hypothetical and speculative instances that are typically the focus of earlier works. He also argues that much of the cultural and metaphysical hype around virtual reality is undeserved. But this does not mean that virtual reality is illusory or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is significant for the altogether different reason that it overturns much of our understanding of how representational media can function and what we can use them to achieve. The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of technology, metaphysics, and game studies.

Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture: Designing in Mixed Realities presents a curated selection of projects and texts contributed by leading international architects and designers who are using virtual reality technologies in their design process. It triggers discussion and debate on exploring the aesthetic potential and establishing its language as an expressive medium in architectural design. Although virtual reality is not new and the technology has evolved rapidly, the aesthetic potential of the medium is still emerging and there is a great deal more to explore. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the current use of virtual reality technologies in the architectural design process. Contributions are presented in six parts, fully illustrated with over 150 images. Recent projects presented are distributed in five themes: introduction to mixed realities; space and form; context and ambiguity; materiality and movement; body and social. Each theme includes richly illustrated essays by leading academics and practitioners, including those from Zaha Hadid Architects and MVRDV, detailing their design process using data-driven methodologies. Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture expands the use of technology per se and focuses on how architecture can benefit from its aesthetic potential during the design process. A must-read for practitioners, academics, and students interested in cutting-edge digital design.

Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies. Arguing that the virtual body is something new—namely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the world—Roberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotle’s Physics between natural and artificial beings—they are both. They are beings that are simultaneously events; they are images that are at once internal and external; they are ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-computational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses. Pursuing this line of thought, Diodato reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts such as mimesis, representation, the relation between illusion and reality, the nature of images and imagination, and the theory of sensory knowledge. Roberto Diodato is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy. Justin L. Harmon is a teaching assistant in the Philosophy Department at the University of Kentucky. Silvia Benso is Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

An art-historical perspective on interactive media art that provides theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and analyzing digital art. Since the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art. Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork and then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance—with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Hegedüs, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.

How augmented reality and virtual reality are taking their places in contemporary media culture alongside film and television. T This book positions augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) firmly in contemporary media culture. The authors view AR and VR not as the latest hyped technologies but as media—the latest in a series of what they term “reality media,” taking their places alongside film and television. Reality media inserts a layer of media between us and our perception of the world; AR and VR do not replace reality but refashion a reality for us. Each reality medium mediates and remediates; each offers a new representation that we implicitly compare to our experience of the world in itself but also through other media. The authors show that as forms of reality media emerge, they not only chart a future path for media culture, but also redefine media past. With AR and VR in mind, then, we can recognize their precursors in eighteenth-century panoramas and the Broadway lights of the 1930s. A digital version of Reality Media, available through the book’s website, invites readers to visit a series of virtual rooms featuring interactivity, 3-D models, videos, images, and texts that explore the themes of the book.

New media, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybernetics: are the latest technologies push back the very limits of 'reality'. The nature of the real in the digital age is ever more hotly debated and the place of these debates in visual culture can hardly be overstated. Innovative and provocative, this book brings together the latest research on 'the state of the real' by practitioners and commentators across the disciplines of photography, film, media studies, critical theory and fine art. Engaging with the work of critics and thinkers as varied as Linda Nochlin, Lev Manovich and Donna Harroway, Lyotard, Baudrillard and Barthes, "The State of the Real" looks first at the different ways in which 'realism' and reality have been understood in recent art history, with a particular focus on debates about the real within photography. Emphasising the role of art in shaping, as well as reflecting, notions of the real, the book features contributions from a number of contemporary artists and showcases a new photoessay by artist Andrew Lee. The collection looks finally towards advanced technologies and the virtual world in a section which concludes with a specially commissioned contribution by acclaimed thinker Slavoj Zizek. This is an indispensable volume for students of 'the digital age' across the fields of art and photography, film, media studies and critical and visual theory.

The concept of immersive multimedia, which is closely related to concepts of augmented reality, brings opportunities in art, education, entertainment, and technology. As such, it is vital to explore the connections between consumers of media content and information parts that come from multimedia platforms. Trends, Experiences, and Perspectives in Immersive Multimedia and Augmented Reality is a critical scholarly resource that offers solutions to the problems that appear in both theoretical and practical dimensions of immersive multimedia experiences on an interdisciplinary platform. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cyber behavior, human-computer interaction, and transmedia, this book is geared towards digital artists, media professionals, developers, academicians, researchers, and upper-level graduate students seeking current research on the exploration of immersive multimedia through the perspectives of technology, communications, and art.

Written by a team of world-renowned artists, researchers and practitioners - all pioneers in using augmented reality based creative works and installations as a new form of art - this is the first book to explore the exciting new field of augmented reality art and its enabling technologies. As well as investigating augmented reality as a novel artistic medium the book covers cultural, social, spatial and cognitive facets of augmented reality art. Intended as a starting point for exploring this new fascinating area of research and creative practice it will be essential reading not only for artists, researchers and technology developers, but also for students (graduates and undergraduates) and all those interested in emerging augmented reality technology and its current and future applications in art.