Immersive Environments and Awareness
By Char Davies

There's important learning that we can have about ourselves by using simulations to generate real experiences for ourselves. What do you think we can learn about ourselves as sentient beings, by utilizing this technology of virtual reality?

In terms of immersing people in virtual environments? When I think of virtual reality, to me, the immersive quality is very important. When people use virtual reality in terms of the Web, it's not immersive. So, my definition is a little more specific. What I think can make the experiences for simulation really powerful and involving the whole body is that they are enveloping; that you are immersed within them. I hope that in the future, and not too far from now, it would be possible for people to have devices that are affordable, that aren't dangerous, that they could wear that will make them feel that what is being broadcast over the Web or a CD or whatever, that they're actually immersed in that space. I feel that when you feel physically enveloped, that you're actually in the middle of a place, of a simulation, which is much more believable because as human beings we're used to being surrounded by space. Our world is not, our sensory perception is not, based on looking at a screen, although for more and more people it's taking more and more time up in their lives, especially for kids, which is a little alarming - it's all focused right there.

As animals, like all animals, we have to be aware of the space all around us both visually and acoustically. I think that when you can bring a sense of immersion into it that the experience will be such that it feels as if a person is really there; that they've really been somewhere. That creates a really interesting paradox because, in my work, people feel that they have been in the place and yet they know that place is not real, but their sensory perceptions tell them and their memory plays back that they were in a real place. They could hear a sound behind them and look and see something, they could float over here and then look behind them or look below them and then decide to go down there. So, they actually feel they're imbedded in place.

It's as if it sweeps you up, but in a very gentle way where your attention is turned to your own perceptions of being in the space. That's what I think can be the power of this technology - to heighten people's awareness, to de-automatize them.

I think, for me, that the most important thing to do with this technology is to use it to heighten people's sensibilities that we are in a place; we are embodied; we are physical; we are imbedded in our own flesh and that flesh is tied through a variety of different systems in to the world in which we are also imbedded. The danger to having everything screen based at this point is it's really just a picture and you can throw yourself into it, such as in a good film, or get into the game play of it, but it's a 2D picture. Once you can move people into an experience that feels spatially enveloping, it has a lot more power. So, that's why I wanted to distinguish what I meant by immersive virtual environments, rather than VR - to make that distinction - because now VR can be used to refer just to what's happening on the Web.

I think that, for me, the important thing to do is to create such environments that increase people's awareness of being here, of being embodied, of being alive in a very extraordinary and fleeting world, because we're not here for very long. I think one of the ways that an immersive virtual reality environment can do that is to not put people in a fantasy place, which a lot of games in VR does, nor put them in a place that attempts to realistically reproduce what this world looks like, but put them in a place which is related to this world but changed enough, transformed enough that they will pay fresh attention to it and that their perceptions will be heightened and made more intense so that they become more aware.

In my work, we've done that both through the use of the interface, which allows people to float up as they breathe in and float down. So, they have the novel experience of feeling as if they're gravity-free and they have no body and yet paradoxically, they're grounded in their body because the interface is based on breathing and balance. You get this wonderful grounding and yet releasing paradox. The other is through the extensive use of semi-transparency so that we're not reproducing, for instance in Osmose or even Éphémère there are forests and there are clearings, but we're not trying to reproduce what they look like, what they look like photographically.> What we're attempting to do is capture their essence and abstract it somewhat and by using semi-transparency, we can get away from this way we see the world, that we've been culturally chained to see the world and perhaps physiologically see the world, which is hard edged, separate objects in empty space and our whole cultural system reaffirms that in terms of I and it, subject/object. But if you start bringing in as a technique, by using semi-transparencies, you start bringing in ambiguity where you don't see separate objects, you say, "Here's a form, but look, there's another form behind it and I can't tell where one form ends and one begins." The power of doing that is that automatically the brain pays more attention. Instead of just saying, "Oh! That's a tree!" They'll say, "Is that a tree? I think maybe it's a tree. I better look at it some more to see if maybe it's a tree. Oh! It's a tree but now it's not a tree." So, you begin to implicate them.

In the work that I do, when people go into the work, their focus is to see the work and to fly around and see what's happening. Then, most people undergo a shift. Their attention focuses to their own perceptions of just being in the space, of floating through it, and it's as if their mind switches from left brain to right brain, from rational to something far more receptive and poetic. Then, when they come out of the work, they feel refreshed in some way because they could be freed from all the distractions. It's very hard to go into an immersive environment like Osmose and Éphémère and think about your work.

It's as if it sweeps you up, but in a very gentle way where your attention is turned to your own perceptions of being in the space. That's what I think can be the power of this technology - to heighten people's awareness, to de-automatize them.

There was a very interesting essay on altered states by Arthur Deekman in a book on altered states by Charles Tart, I believe, and Deekman spoke about traditional meditation techniques where people would meditate for 30 years and undergo a process of de-automatization or de-habituation, because our perceptions are so habitual, we forget that there's gravity, and we forget that we're walking on a horizontal surface. Yet, through certain techniques like meditation, people can de-habitualize. I think that perhaps that's been happening in these environments because people are given the illusivary sensation that they are floating and that nothing's material or solid. That it's temporarily freeing them from their habits and making them feel wonder at the fact that they can float and that nothing's solid and they feel the sense of perceptual wonder. When they come back out, I think for a while and it does fade, but I think for a while, they feel renewed in some way. They feel that they went back to something that they'd forgotten. I think that's why some people cry when they come out of the work is that sense of nostalgia for maybe their childhood wonder and childhood connection.

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