Inhabitable Bodies: On Embodying Virtual Reality Experiences

Virtual reality has been repeatedly presented as a medium capable of providing effective first-person experiences and even as an opportunity to transcend the limitations of physical embodiment. As a result, immersive environments are often understood as a rearticulation or remediation of the figure of point-of-view shot, which dominates contemporary mediality. But, how does virtual reality actually engage with the possibility of inhabiting a different body, to provide us with a prosthetic or augmented body? The chapter tries to outline a phenomenological analysis of the conditions of embodiment elicited by contemporary immersive environment, by focusing on: 1) how the virtual dimension does not replace the real with the experience of an “alternative” reality, but gives rise to a twoway movement, since the virtual space is simultaneously augmented by the real; 2) how immersive interfaces put us in contact with a constantly actualizing reality, which unfolds in real time, to the detriment of any representational or referential component; and 3) how virtual environments confront us with an image which generates in accordance with the embodied movement of its experiencer, the living body being the pivot of a process of performativity, shared by the immersants’ bodily movement and the virtual image.