Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Online reality technology holds great promise and there is considerable hype in terms of how it might be used in both the artistic and applied arenas; however, there are still major logistical issues to overcome related to cumbersome head-mounted interfaces, low-resolution displays, motion sickness, high costs, and whether or not we actually need or want it at all. Coming from a human factors, perceptual psychology, and STS perspective, this paper looks at the chronology of other 3D and stereo imaging technologies such as stereoscopes, anaglyphs, polarized glasses, shutter glasses, 3D Television, and CAVES to analyze why these technologies failed to take hold as more than mere novelty after initial periods of popularity and optimism. Through considering the factors that contributed to the “failure” of these past technologies, we can see that VR faces many of the same technological, cultural, financial and social issues, which would need to be resolved if VR is to survive as a creative medium and as a new form of expanded cinema. Going beyond the technical, this paper also addresses the need for VR to develop a new and unique cinematographic language. In this regard, a number of contemporary artists and filmmakers, who are experimenting with the medium in profound ways are presented in the hopes that they might very well be on the verge of doing for VR what Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) did for film, thus saving VR from becoming yet another example of a dead media.