Projects reviewed in this article:
In 1609, Galileo's telescopic eye reached the moon. The telescope did not only extend the range of human vision; to some extent, it detached the eye from the physical environment of the perceptual body. By now, this detachment or flight from the body has been taken to new levels by the concept of virtual reality. As the product of an interactive technology that immerses its users in a three-dimensional world generated by a computer, virtual reality ideally allows users to interact with the virtual objects that comprise that world. Today, the fact and the dream of virtual reality lie somewhere between the flight simulators used to train pilots during W.W.II and the "holodeck" on the Enterprise in the Star Trek series. But it may not take long until full bodysuits, which allow users to sense the movement of their virtual body in virtual space, are commercially available. We finally may become cybernauts floating in digital, electronic space.
Virtual reality constitutes a psychology of disincarnation, since it promises the possibility of downloading consciousness into a computer, leaving the obsolete body behind, and inhabiting the datascape as cyborg. VR opens up the thrilling possibility of a mind independent of the biology of bodies--thus oscillating between a celebration of the Cartesian separation of mind and body and the "I think, therefore I am" metaphysics of Descartes.
Virtual reality and cyberspace promise to finally provide users with a three-dimensional interaction experience that creates the illusion they are inside a world rather than observing an image. Scott Bukatman has claimed that "virtual reality has become the very embodiment of postmodern disembodiment." In this respect, virtual reality is the manifestation and continuation of a flight from the body, which has its origins in the fifteenth-century invention of linear perspective vision. In this context, it makes perfect sense that the body in cyberspace has been referred to as "electronic cadaver"--a term that combines disembodiment with the transformation into a digital body.
The attraction of virtual reality also consists in the possibility of remaking the body, of creating digital counterparts released from the shortcomings and mortal limitations of our physical bodies. Metaworlds allow visitors to create their own (cyber)self and be all they want to be.
Victoria Vesna's project Bodies Inc. (see review in IA Vol. 1 No. 2) allows visitors to the website to order a custom-designed virtual body via e-mail. An order form gives potential body-owners various options which range from skin to gender and sexual preference. Periodic information about the status of your and other bodies is sent to you periodically by e-mail.
However, there remains a fundamental difference between the cyberbody in the digital space and the perceptual body in the space of the physical world. Both the cyberbody and the perceptual body may interact with the world they find themselves in, but there still seems to be a lack of sensory experience in virtual worlds. Can cyberspace become an extension of our nervous system? Is there something like digital perception? How can our technologically enhanced bodies connect? Various projects have tried to address these questions.
http://www.merlin.com.au/stelarc/pingbody/index.html
The artist Stelarc has for some time been exploring the possibilities of using the Web to connect remote bodies and to displace movement from one physical space to another (see Annette Weintraub's report on SIGGRAPH 96 in IA Vol. 1 No. 6). In Ping Body, Stelarc provides his body as a host for 'pings' or locators that are mapped to body muscle, so that main muscle groups can remotely be activated.
http://www.khm.uni-koeln.de/~mem_brane/Stahl/stahl.html
Stahl Stenslie's Tactile Technologies (TT) also attempt to expand the perceptual limits of technology. TT tries to introduce the body to digital perception by focusing on bodily sensations and stimuli.
In Stenslie's Inter_Skin project, the two participants wear a sensoric outfit that is capable of both transmitting and receiving different multi-sensoric stimuli. The communication system concentrates on the transmission and receiving of sensual contact. By touching your body, you simultaneously forward a touch to the other participant.
Stenslie's cyberSM project--built in cooperation with Kirk Woolford--is a real-time, multi-sensory communication system for two participants; it was a first attempt to solve the problem of how to establish tele-tactile communication. The project allows for the building and exchange of complex, 3-dimensional Virtual Identities (VIDs). Participants have to build their visual 3-dimensional bodies from a body-bank comprising a large selection of upper and lower synthetic body-parts. Having built their virtual personality, the participants can connect and exchange their visual VIDs. From then on the exchanged bodies serve as visual interfaces for sensoric suits. The body selection of each of the participants now appears on the other one's screen and by clicking on the various touch zones stimuli in the sensory suits are released. To our knowledge, the "cyberSM" project still is the only functioning cybersex system available. The first link took place in the fall of 1993, inter-connecting participants in Paris and Cologne. To this date, more than 200 participants have been involved in testing the devices.
There are other projects that have tried to establish a connection between bodies in a virtual environment. One of them is Seiko Mikami's Molecular Informatics Ver.2.0 - Morphogenic Substance via Eye-Tracking (see Sean Cubitt's review at RHIZOME INTERNET). Creating a virtual architecture through the movement of their eyes, two players try to lock their gaze and, if successful, are rewarded by musical sounds and color.
The possibilities of "connecting" are taken to a further level by the Inter Dis-communication Machine developed by Kazuhiko Hachiya. Played by two people wearing head-mounted displays, the machine projects one player's sight and sound perception of the virtual "playground" into the other one's display, thus confusing the borders between "you" and "me." Both "Inter_skin"--which let's you feel the bodily sensations of another person and can record and play back the tactile stimuli--and the "Inter Dis-communication Machine" are reminiscent of the "Sim-Stim" device in William Gibson's Neuromancer , which allows a user to 'enter' another person's body and perception (without being able to influence it). We aren't there yet, but it may not take very long. Perhaps technology will offer us entirely new ways of connecting some day; or perhaps the question "Who am I?" will be irrelevant, replaced by "What is all that I can be?"
© Hyperactive Co. 1996
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