Maria Engberg: The Aesthetics of Reality Media Experiences

Oct 5, 14.15-16.00, a hybrid seminar.

Partly building on my work with Jay Bolter and Blair MacIntyre, most recently in Reality Media (MIT Press, 2021) and realitymedia.digital (the digital companion to the printed book), I will discuss the aesthetic implications of virtual reality spaces. Aesthetic here refers both to the principles of design and making, visually, sonically, and proprioceptively, and to how we perceive the experiences sensorially. My examples come from individual works and games (made with tools such as Unity or Unreal Engine) and from environments such as Facebook Horizon that recall the sci-fi concept of metaverse (from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash 1992). I will discuss some of the forms of embodied experiences that VR spaces as well as adjacent technologies such as 360° video afford, what experiences these technologies invite us to have. I will also analyze some of the rhetorical and dramaturgical framing that the makers use.

K3 research seminar in K3 studio or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/62522949096 in collaboration with Data Society research programme.