The Body as Virtual Frame. Performativity of the Gaze in Immersive Environments

Immersive environments perceived through head-mounted displays allow us
to experience a tridimensional virtual space, no longer limited by the frame
boundaries which have traditionally characterized our perception of images. By
virtue of its capacity to overcome the image threshold, virtual reality is often
described as the most powerful tool for incorporating the perception of the
other, that is as the ‘ultimate empathy machine’. The idea of dissolving the image
frame is also the theoretical pivot of A.G. Iñárritu’s latest virtual reality work
Carne y Arena, in which the Mexican director implemented unprecedented
virtual technologies in order to tell the experience of a group of refugees trying
to cross the border between Mexico and the United States. Through an analysis
of Iñárritu’s installation, I aim to undo the empathy and immersive rhetoric
through which VR contents and devices are presented, and argue instead that
VR experience is pierced by a number of discontinuities and gaps in perception,
with largely neglected potentialities. By interrogating the overlapping of the
limits of the image, the boundaries of the body and those that are established by
geographical and biopolitical borders, I show how in virtual reality, if the frame
of the image seems to disappear, then the very function of framing does not
dissolve, but, rather, is assumed by the experiencer’s body and embodied gaze.