3DVisA DISCUSSION FORUM: Illusions of Virtual Reality by Hanna Buczynska-Garewicz, 3DVisA Bulletin :: Keywords: time, space, illusion, virtual reality, phenomenology.

Time and Space: The experience of a moment of time or of a fragment of space is essentially an act of understanding in the human sense. Our temporal and spatial experience is never simply given as a pure sensual perception (vision, touch, sound, etc.), but its sensual aspect is always dominated by intellectual and emotional meanings. In other words, the sensual is conveying the spiritual. Moreover, in our perception of the time past (a historical event such as the Battle of Waterloo) or of the remnants of the place which no longer exists (e.g. the ruins of Forum Romanum) a sort of imagination or empathy is frequently at work. We see and feel more than that which is really present: in a magical way, due to the ability of emphatic understanding the non-present is presencing itself as well. This presencing of the non-present is originated by an observer, never by the physical thing itself. The purely physical space as a point on the map is spiritually empty. Without our ‘colouring’ by the emphatic historical understanding it has no spiritual content at all. The greatest pleasure of travel in territories with a long and rich history consists of the emphatic insights into something which is physically absent and can be experienced only due to our spiritual ability. Empathy brings back, i.e. is presencing, something absent.

Such a nature of human experience of time and space must be taken under consideration when questions regarding virtual reality are asked. The new technologies of computer simulation and the use of 3D visualisation help us to recreate the past of places lost. Thus the illusion is born that the computer can ‘visualise the invisible’. Can it really? Or, more precisely, what can be visualised and what cannot, and what are the limitations of 3D from the point of view of human experience of time and space? Here are some sceptical notions regarding the utilisation of 3D visualisation. More >>.

Also in this issue: VIRTUAL WORLDS, REAL LEARNING? Education in Second Life by Andy Powell.