Digital Media Foundations - MD4004

1. Digital Media Foundations - MD4004 Immersion and Simulation

2. Definitions: Immersion: …is a metaphoric use of the experience of submersion applied to representation, fiction or simulation. […] The term is widely used for describing partial or complete suspension of disbelief enabling action or reaction to stimulations encountered in a virtual or artistic environment.(wikipedia) Simulation: • An assumption or imitation of a particular appearance or form; counterfeit; sham. • The representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use ofanother system, especially acomputer program designedfor the purpose.(DICTIONARY.COM)

3. Immersion • ‘[T]he reader plunges under the sea (immersion), reaches a foreign land (transportation), is taken prisoner (being caught in a story, being a captured audience), and loses contact with all other realities (being lost in a book).’ (Ryan, 2001, p. 93). • An effortless, immediate turning of codes into contents, that is achieved through familiar metaphors and aesthetic features.

4. Elements enhancing immersion: • Coherent narrative plot, consistency, unity • Causality • Presentation (e.g. twists that make the story more interesting) • Inclusion of anthropomorphic beings (facial expressions, judgments, emotions encourage viewer’s/reader’s identification) • Atmosphere and style (operate in a referential way) • Representationality: ‘realism’, increased size of screen, detail, Dolby surround sound, vibrant colours, SFX to attract attention. Link to article on film and perception: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~dalbers/perception/film.html

5. PipilottiRist- Sip My Ocean (1996) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJhgIcbSEeM

6. JacquesLacan‘The mirror stage as Formative of the I function, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, 1949. Fragmentation, lack of distinction between ourselves and others Symbolic Mirror Stage (body as a Gestalt) Imaginary

7. ‘The basis of PW [Possible Worlds] theory is the set-theoretical idea that reality – the sum total of the imaginable – is a universe composed of a plurality of distinct elements, or worlds, and that is hierarchically structured by the opposition of one well-designated element, which functions as the centre of the system, to all the other members of the set. The central element is commonly interpreted as ‘the actual world’ and the satellites as merely possible worlds. For a world to be possible it must be linked to the center by a so-called accessibility relation.’(Ryan, 2001, p. 99) The ‘Actual World’ Reality Other possible worlds

8. 380 BC Plato’s aim is to define the ideal governor of the polis (city-state).

9. ‘Fiction treats the visit as vacation and mobilizes all the powers of language to strengthen the bond between visitor and the textual landscape.’ (Ryan, 2001, p. 95) But also… • ‘To survive immersion, we must take oxygen from the surface, stay in touch with reality’ (Ibid, p. 97).

10. Degrees of Immersion • No immersion (non-communicative work, no engagement/access) • Partial immersion (reading, engaging with a narrative, belief systems) • Total Immersion (dreams, madness, reality)

11. Nadar (1840) Honoré de Balzac. “According to Balzac’s theory, all physical bodies are made up entirely of layers of ghostlike images, an infinite number of leaflike skins laid one on the top of the other. Since Balzac believed man was incapable of making something material from an apparition, from something impalpable - that is, creating something from nothing - he concluded that every time someone had his photograph taken, one of the spectral layers was removed from the body and transferred to the photograph. Repeated exposures entailed the unavoidable loss of subsequent ghostly layers, that is, the very essence of life.” Nadar (Tournachon, Gaspar, F) (1900) ‘Nadar: My Life as a Photographer, An Excerpt’, Photography in Print, Vicky Goldberg (ed.), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp. 127-8.

12. eXistenZ (1999) – Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAdbdUt_h9M

13. Jean Baudrillard - Hyperreality “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real”(Baudrillard, 1994, p. 2)

14. Orders of Simulacra • 1. Before the Industrial Era: - Cultural production that works to ‘counterfeit’ nature - Signs are tied to social hierarchies • 2. Industrial Era: - Mass production, reproduction (no longer imitation of nature) - technology producing but also reproducing signs and objects • 3. The Order of Simulation/Simulacra: - there are only models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences.

15. The Order of Simulation/Simulacra • Reality itself no longer presupposed starts being perceived as a construct. • We have lost touch with nature and the goods we consume. • Codes (local or global signifiers) take us beyond physical reality. Society is increasingly represented and presents itself as a binary code. • Computer modeling designs and tests objects through imaginary scenarios that predict and even shape events

16. America’s Army • America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project) is a series of video games and other media developed by the United States Army. America's Army has "grown in ways its originators couldn't have imagined".Dozens of government training and simulation applications using the America's Army platform have been developed to train and educate U.S. Army soldiers. America's Army has also been used to deliver virtual soldiering experiences to participants at events, such as air shows, amusement parks, and sporting events around the country. The America's Army series has also been expanded to include versions for Xbox, and mobile applications published through licensing arrangements. http://www.break.com/game-trailers/game/americas-army-3/americas-army-3-trailer

17. Scenes from the ‘game’ and New York Army National Guard Celebrates Birthday of America's Army (2011)

18. “News At Seven is a system that automatically generates a virtual news show. Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to artificial anchors forpresentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented. Automated News Bulletin (2008) Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents the content to its audience using avatars and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual." http://infolab.northwestern.edu/projects/news-at-seven/

19. Friedrich Kittler, 1997 Software/hardware and Information Materialism The hardware is authoritarian: it defines meaning through priorities, prohibitions, privileges and handicaps. It eludes control from the user and structures communication from within. This is not noticeable because: • Content, simulation, GUIs and protection software (protected mode) conceal underlying power structures. They provide the illusion of interactivity, openness and user-friendliness through software, but they restrict and control what a user can do. • Binary code is only read by machines

20. The Posthuman “This age of high technology, in which the human body is no longer tied to ‘nature,’ but is […] increasingly open to technological design and modification, and in which the notion of the human is relentlessly called into question, might be called posthuman.” (Gane and Beer 2007, p. 116)

21. Katherine Hayles ‘Embodied Virtuality’ • New aesthetics and forms of subjectivity born out of the interface between bodies and computer-based technologies • Cyborg Citizenships and Posthuman democracy “What it means to be human […] is about how to create just societies in a transnational global world that may include in its purview both carbon and silicon citizens” (Hayles 2005, p. 148) • Politics of Nature and Science • At which point can human life be recognised as such? • How do we define ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’ in a world where humans need to compete with machines?

22. The Media and Body Image http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U&feature=more_related Evolution is an advertising campaign launched by Unilever in 2006 as part of its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, to promote the newly created Dove Self-Esteem Fund

23. New Settings: Second Life Gracie Kendal (or Kristine Schomaker) "1000 Avatars"

24. Gracie's current work explores online identity with the construction of Avatars.  Her work as a whole stands as an allegory of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion, belief and reality. She basically takes photos of people and turns them into avatars though second life. http://1000avatars.wordpress.com/artist-bio/ Publishing Party • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfa72KNwnwE Gracie speaking about the origin of her idea • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kl_XshkvdU Other projects • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcq4pnY3xP0

25. Blade Runner (1982) - Opening Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaR5wVL9x2I Blade Runner Leon & Mr Holden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbS_dxHbfA&feature=related Hal 9000 VS Dave - Ontological scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwBmPiOmEGQ Matrix Trailer (1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8e-FF8MsqU Philosophy and the Matrix – Baudrillard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3tr0gSNBx4

26. What are the implications to our narratives? • Reality and simulacra blur. • Machines increasingly communicate with other machines, structure social life and shape lived environments. • New configurations of ‘virtual power’ • Distinctions between humans-animals, organisms-machines, physical and non-physical are no longer secure. We need to re-think what ‘human’ and ‘social’, ‘human values’, ‘human rights’ and ‘human dignity’ are.

27. New Realisms • HD, 3D, Computer Generated Graphics (CGI), Special Effects (SFX) • Narrative complexity is sacrificed. Blockbusters are calculated exercises in profit-making: expensive presentation and effects, pure show. • Paradox: New visual realism, based on the wizadry of CGI that reintroduces the least cinematic form, animation, back into the mainstream. (e.g. Avatar)

28. New Settings for immersion and limitations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp3ARRzNnGc&list=PLF7906B02811AD6B5&index=6 • Virtual environments, social media, the web, provide new settings for art and narratives. In interactive environments we have many different narratives depending on the user. The programme itself is not a representation of a sequence of events. • Nevertheless, through restrictions and the absence of Free Will the distinction often made between experiences, individuals or "selves" is largely artificial or arbitrary. • Depthlessness: the illusory potential provided captures the surface appearance of things.

29. ‘Virtual reality’ principles being transferred to other genres • It influences what we consider more relevant, more current. What represents us here and now. • Reality TV shows such as The Big Brother House which are social simulations • Loose narratives, lack of narrative coherence, no illustration of underlying relations.

30. Ryan Trecartin “Composed using widely available editing software (his first films were edited on iMovie), Trecartin’s films flicker like straight-to-tape renditions of an oversaturated world. They star tribes of kids and tricksters whose speech is articulate yet schizophasic, a patois of home-brewed slang, corporate buzzwords and chat-room inanities that blend and stutter like the unmediated mutterings of the digital unconscious. These films appear to be about as narrative-led as a computer meltdown, but they are undeniably compelling” (http://www.thewhitereview.org/art/ryan-trecartin-the-real-internet-is-inside-you/) I-Be Area (2007) http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_area.html P.opular S.ky (section ish) (2009) http://www.ubu.com/film/trecartin_popular.html

31. Bibliography • Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. • Gane, N. and Beer, B. (2008) ‘Simulation’, in New Media: The Key Concepts, Oxford: Berg. • Hayles, N.K. (2005) My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Kittler, F. (1997) Literature, Media, Information Systems. Amsterdam: G+A Arts. • Lacan, J. (1949) ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, Écrits: a Selection,Bruce Fink (trans.), New York: Norton, 2004. • Macluhan, M. (2001), ‘The Medium is the Message’, in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge, pp. 7-23. • Nadar (Tournachon, Gaspar, F) (1900) ‘Nadar: My Life as a Photographer, An Excerpt’, Photography in Print, Vicky Goldberg (ed.), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp. 127-8. • Plato (c. 380 BC) ‘Plato, The Republic, Chapter XXV, The Allegory of the Cave’, in The Narrative Reader, Martin Macquillan (ed.), London: Routledge. • Ryan, L. M. (2001), ‘The Text as World: Theories of Immersion’, in Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 89-114.