From Cyberspace to Virtual Space: Media-Phenomenological Aspects of Immersive Digital Environments

The essay investigates the specific mode of spatial experience generated by virtual reality (VR) environments, through a phenomenological and mediarcheological approach. Unlike other digital media, VR transforms images into inhabitable environments, requiring a redefinition of the very concept of image and its relationship to spatiality. Starting from the genealogy of cyberspace and the conceptual pair deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation, the author analyses how VR technologies produce a specific form of spatial immersion, in which the user is positioned as the zero-point of the coordinate system of the digital scenario. Drawing on phenomenological descriptions of spatiality, particularly from Husserl’s theory, the study reconstructs the perceptual and kinesthetic structures underlying the constitution of virtual space. It is argued that while VR environments succeed in generating a sense of spatial presence, they struggle to evoke the contingent, open-ended quality of physical space — what could be called the worldliness or sense of world.