Reinventing sensory experiences: the challenge of creating virtual realities

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology raises many questions about the "relationships" between creators of virtual worlds and their users. How do creators manage to create a subjective user experience within these universes? What understandings of the senses are shared between creators and users in a playful context such as video games? In this project, I propose that, if reality is understood by the senses (Valinnini et al., 2011), the same is true for virtual reality (Slater 2003). My project involves observing the process of creating virtual reality games as well as interviews with the creators and users of these games. This methodological approach aims to understand the sensory experience experienced by the users of this technology and the one imagined and expected by their designers. My analysis is rooted in post-phenomenology (Ihde 2015, Rosenberg and Verbeek 2015) and Science and Technology Studies (Shilling 2005). These approaches are used to better understand the role of material in the virtual immersion experience and to better understand how creators perceive the senses, their roles, and their transmission processes within a virtual universe. Ultimately, I seek to understand how the construction of a VR informs the way in which "reality" is perceived and reproduced, and how the limits of sensory "realities" can be reinvented and renegotiated in the VR universe.