Class

Week 1 – Immersive Technology, Computer Vision and Intelligence

This first week focused on analysing various aspects and fields where VR has been advancing and the social and practical impact these types of software have had on society.

However, we also looked into the risks that arise as technology moves forward. Some examples we discussed in class included technology as a means to fight or deepen biases. Furthermore, we even tackled challenges in regard to the humanization of technology by analysing one of the most significant failed socio-technological experiments from Microsoft, Tay.

I think VR technology still needs to evolve considerably before we witness those potential scenarios. But this does not mean we shouldn’t be thinking about them. On the contrary! It’s now that we should conduct more research so that we avoid problems that have been tackled before in the tech industry.

It was a very interesting discussion and it really inspired me to think more about the theme I want to research for my essay this year. My plan is to address VR in education, once again. Only this time, my goal is to focus on the risks VR might have on the minds of developing children and how we should adapt it so that it becomes an ally to the upbringing and education of children, rather than an obstacle, to summarize it very briefly.

Homework – Week 1

Week 2 – Theories and Aesthetics of Storytelling in VR I

This week we analysed the use of colour, props and shapes in storytelling. It reminded me a lot of my animation classes, two years ago. Most people don’t know or don’t realise the importance of such visual theories. It’s very easy to overlook such small details and even think they were just “randomly” chosen. But the truth is that movies wouldn’t feel the same without artists designing such important details in visual storytelling.

I think what felt most frustrating about this is that we don’t really learn any of this in this course, practically I mean. I think this would be great knowledge to use in the game we’re developing and the VR documentary as well. It is true that some of us might take VR to a less “artsy” path but I still think that these types of visual rules and strategies are very important. Especially in VR, which relies mostly on the visual sense.

And there is another element that I think is really important to mention. Camera angles and transitions are amazing ways to create the flow or feeling of a scene. Filming over the shoulder, point of you and close-up are some examples of such angles used in countless movies. I think this element is even more overlooked than the rest since it isn’t physical but instead requires the viewer to be visually aware of they are positioned in the movie, relative to the characters. I reckon this would be a great addition to this lesson!

Note: I used images from the TV show arcane on purpose. It is one of the best if not the best show I have ever seen. It’s not just the plot. Visually, the show is incredible and even people who wouldn’t normally point out such details, are completely flabbergasted at how visually stunning the shots are. (Highly recommend it as s show and also from an artistic perspective).

Homework – Week 2

For this week’s assignment, I chose to interpret/analyse a 360 comic book experience I found quite fascinating, in VR.

To summarize it very quickly the main premise is a boy that meets a girl that can stop time around her and him for a couple of minutes, so that they can play around all they want without being disturbed by anyone, eventually developing romantic feelings for each other. Sadly, meddling with time eventually takes a toll on her and she ends up getting into a comma and passes away. As I see it, this story is an interpretation of some kind of disease and the time-stopping works as a metaphor for the glorious time they spent together which almost felt like it was just them and the world around them didn’t exist.

Anyway, I feel like there were two main factors that influenced the way this story impacted the reader. The first one is the soundtrack and the other one is the reader’s physical presence in the story.

Firstly, the soundtrack is probably the most relevant factor throughout the whole experience. Normally, comic books do not have sound or music, so this added a new layer to the type of experience readers usually get while reading comics. It felt a lot like watching a dramatic tv show due to the extreme emotional charge that came with hearing music and watching the story develop at the same time. However, it still felt like a comic book, only with a whole other level of immersion.

The other element I want to mention is the reader’s physical presence in the story. Some of the scenes turn the reader to the main character, making them adopt the main character’s perspective. As a consequence the reader ends up developing an up close one-to-one relationship with the other character, adding to all the current interactions we have in either films or books. This makes everything more tragic since it feels like we become part of the narrative, and even though we personally came to know this character first-hand, the ending was inevitable, and therefore even sadder.

There were also other interesting elements such as playing with the colour palette to bring the focus to the main characters or the floating particles of light that turned a few scenes into somewhat of a fantasy tale. Also, the use of completely black screens to mark time jumps. And white ones that add an emotional, almost angelical feeling to the final scenes, which obviously makes the reader sad, yet somehow at peace. The fact this all happens in a 360 experience makes it even more touching and immersive.

Week 3 – Theories and Aesthetics of Storytelling in VR II

Today we addressed once again techniques for storytelling and the effects of shape and colour and how these change our perspectives in media and cinematography.

We also analysed how those perspectives have changed throughout the years, depending on the generation, available technology and cultural ideas. We mainly discussed this phenomenon in regard to society’s ever-changing definition and aesthetic view of the future, or futurism.

It’s interesting to see how our own perceptions of the future have changed over the years and how we subconsciously get those ideas from movies, tv shows and the media in general. We looked at various pictures of how the future looked like to past eras and generations, and I found it quite funny. Those ideas of new and futuristic felt old to me. The irony of a past idea of the future that feels antiquated is extremely amusing. This is not to say that our current aesthetic prediction of the future is more correct, but instead to say that those views always reflect our current reality and ideas. In the end, we can never predict the future accurately because it’s always changing based on everything that’s evolving around us.

Homework

This week’s homework is extremely relevant to the overall outcome of this unit. The task is to finally pick a question for this year’s essay.

In the beginning, I wanted to somehow focus my question on the education of young children and address the effects of VR on young children. However, it feels a bit similar to what I did last year with a small shift in perspective and age group. Therefore, I think it would be more interesting and useful to analyse the overall effects of VR on children since this action already constitutes a form of implementing educational practices and helping with youth development.

At first, I considered analysing all possible effects, such as social, phycological and physical. But since we are restricted by a limited word count, I will limit these effects to only physiological ones. Even then, these psychological consequences will always somehow affect the rest, so in a way, I will be analysing everything, still.

Another problem I had, was how to define the age group I wanted to analyse, based on a coherent idea of what a young child would be, as in a pre-teen minor. However, I feel like those definitions can vary slightly from website to website or from country to country. My original idea was for 6 to 12-year-olds since it’s the age children enter school and right before puberty. Despite that, there are too many different definitions of when that period starts, so I had to pick a relevant source and go with that definition, for the sake of arguing. As a result, I went with the definition stated by the United Nations “The United Nations, for statistical purposes, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years, without prejudice to other definitions by Member States. This definition was made during preparations for the International Youth Year (1985) and endorsed by the General Assembly (see A/36/215 and resolution 36/28, 1981). All United Nations statistics on youth are based on this definition, as illustrated by the annual yearbooks of statistics published by the United Nations system on demography, education, employment and health.

By that definition, therefore, children are those persons under the age of 14. It is, however, worth noting that Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines ‘children’ as persons up to the age of 18.” (https://www.un.org/development/desa/youth/what-we-do/faq.html).

As a result, my essay question/theme will be “The psychological effects of VR on children’s (education and) development” (Assuming a maximum age of 14 years). I think education should stay in brackets since I don’t want to theme to only focus on something that hasn’t happened yet. I would have to make a lot of assumptions about how VR would be applied in education, so I’d rather talk about the effects on children’s development in general, as that implies tackling education as well.

“The effects of VR on children’s psychological development”

Week 4 – VR Theories and Aesthetics

During today’s class, we analysed simulacra, simulation, simulacrum and hyperrealism.

I had never heard of the concepts of simulacra and simulacrum. At first, I didn’t quite get it but as we started looking at examples, it became more clear.

However, what drew my attention the most was the last slide. The new Quest Pro is the first commercial VR headset to mix both simulacra and simulation. Of course, there have been other situations where this happened. Augmented reality allowed this to happen ever since it was created. I remember seeing it on the ps vita or pokemon go but had never thought about it this way.

And nowadays, for the first time, we have a medium that allows for a combination of all these elements, Virtual Reality. This could be a really interesting topic to develop further next year…

Week 6 – Games as Cheating Lesson

This week’s session was about human-computer interaction and how we perceive and trust AI. Also, the way it has shaped our perception of the world and ideas we take for granted nowadays, such as online maps, locations, and the way we remember stereotypical images of humans, animals, etc. We also addressed how to distinguish computers from humans using the imitation game and also game theory.

Overall, it was a very interesting session. We did this thing where we drew images of a person, a horse and a lizard, and even though there were different skills in drawing abilities, the poses in which we drew them were actually quite similar. This was definitely a way to show how we have acquired these very standardised ideas without even being aware of them.

I think we talked about so many topics today, that it becomes kind of difficult to summarise them a establish one opinion about everything. However, I can say that computers have fundamentally changed the way we live and perceive our world and have been continuously closing the gap between humans and AI. The ways it’s influencing us will only continue growing and might eventually become an inherent trait of human beings, by incorporating technology into our own species. I feel like I am deviating a lot here, but there are too many aspects of our lives that involve technology and AI. and the ways it shapes our views and interacts with us are too broad to summarise in one paragraph.

Also, regarding VR and Meta, I think it is still early to think about how it affects our perception of the world. Most people don’t even understand it… But as the headsets evolve and hopefully the software gains better graphics and has more applications in real life, it will add to the way we experience reality. This could be through the metaverse or even other smaller things such as education or shopping, for example. But I will not be discussing examples, otherwise, this post will be huge.

However, I think I find the idea of the Turing test very interesting and would like to explore it further, maybe next year. I want to connect it with an idea that has been intriguing me, mind uploading in VR. Like in the episode San Junipero from Black Mirror.

Week 7 – Politics of Immersive and the Mediated Reality

Today, we looked into how we perceive the world. Be it with a realistic approach in mind, meaning that reality is detached from our perceptions and memories, and has its own objective truth. Or a more constructive approach, which states that reality is a combination of our perceptions, memories and views of the world.

However, I don’t think we should compare these ideas. When talking about my existence, I always associate the ideas I have with experiences I have had in the past. The reality from a human’s perspective is that. We don’t come to this world with a predefined idea of what surrounds us. We build it gradually and learn from reality by creating our own ideas of it. On the other hand, this is not to say that reality doesn’t have an objective truth to it, we don’t know. There is much that we probably can’t perceive nor explain about reality because our senses constantly lie to us or aren’t capable of grasping all reality entails. Therefore, in my opinion, we should not compare both views because we are only human and our perceptions will always be based on memories and constructions of reality that depend on our senses and brain connections. But this construction can also be part of the realistic approach. Who’s to say that the way we experience reality isn’t realistic? It is to us… But it still relies on constructivism.

We also analysed hyperreality in VR and how it has been used by people to escape the real world or look for different types of interactions.

I think to some point it has been successful and helped a minority of people deal with life by somehow living a hyperreal version of it. However, I think the metaverse Meta wants to create is years ahead of its time. We currently don’t have the technology that allows for the type of immersion people would need to simulate a reality where we could stay for hours. I think we are getting there but the current equivalent of that is the analogy we used for game graphics and how when we look back everything looks blocky and low resolution. The only difference is that most people don’t feel that the metaverse is good now or that it will ever be. In my opinion, we will eventually get there because it’s human nature to want to create life. It’s just a matter of when.

Week 8 – Mimesis

Today was a very interesting session! I think at the end we were talking about nihilism and existential paradoxes and ideas. But the main idea of this session was mimesis or imitation. The main goal was to say that human beings constantly try to represent reality artificially and that we are making it more realistic, to the point where we think we will eventually create a reality so real, it will be impossible to know it’s not real. As a result, we have questioned ourselves “Is this reality real or a simulation?”.

Again, at least for me, I don’t think it’s a relevant question. Even if it is a simulation, it doesn’t change anything. And I know that as human beings we will continue to look for this answer and I think in the long term, this pursuit is good. But since I’m not a scientist and I’m 99.9% sure we won’t get an answer to this before I die, It’s completely irrelevant to me. In the long term, if humanity survives and acquires all knowledge in the universe (if possible), then good for them. That’s why I used the analogy for the existence of God during class. I’m agnostic because I believe I won’t find an answer to whether go is real or not, so it’s irrelevant to look for one.

I feel like I deviated a bit from the actual conversation. But I do believe we will eventually create a reality so real, we won’t be able to tell it’s fake (would it be fake?). It might take years before it happens but I think it’s the natural progression of our existence.

Note: It’s kind of funny to me how many of the things we talk about during these sessions, remind me of high school and the subjects I studied. It feels nostalgic…

Week 9 – Immersive Visual Music/Sound

This week we talked about the evolution of sound and music throughout the decades. As well as the transition to abstraction in sound and art.

I found it really interesting since I haven’t really learned a lot about the history of sound in the past. Just like in other types of history, sound also reflects the era it was created and it explains why things turned out the way they did.

It was really cool that we got to watch and experience so many videos and sound interpretations. I had never really given it much thought, but I think this session, at least for me, was a way to broaden my horizons when it comes to sound in immersive media and how it can create such profound experiences. This actually makes a lot of sense when looking at cinema and how sound influences the way we perceive a scene. But I think today we went a step further and looked at sound as a main focus for storytelling.

Week 10 – 360 Gaze

Today, we talked about immersion and the viewer’s perspective throughout history and in different mediums, such as paintings, games, theatre, social media, etc.

I think it’s very interesting to analyse the way immersion has been recreated throughout the decades. However, nowadays, we are witnessing a fusion of all that’s been done before, together with the new technologies that are being created and might change our current paradigm of immersion, for example, VR. Everything nowadays is so overwhelming because there is an almost never-ending amount of information, that we often overlook the many ways we immersive ourselves, be it through technology or art.

I also feel like today’s session was very focused on our essays, which was actually very helpful and served to clarify some things about the proposal. I have never written one before and I’m still a bit confused as to what I should write but I think it’ll be fine.

Homework

Sitting on my office chair, melancholically writing another repetitive script filled with meaningless idiosyncrasies. Everything is repetitive, and everyone goes about their lives blinded by lies and a promise of purpose.

I am tired.

I hurriedly put on my jacket, grab my cane and run away from this meaningless urban nightmare. I run to the train station and buy tickets to an unknown destination.

As soon as I get there, I see a tremendously huge mountain. So high, its peak is completely covered by an immense layer of clouds.

I climb it, only to find myself contemplating life. It is then and there that I see myself as if looking at a mirror, and in the midst of cloudy pinnacles, for the very first time, I feel that I simply exist in this exalted scenery of relentless peace. I am my truest self.