Fear of Virtual Reality: Theoretical Case Study on Photography

Qianhui Bian, Nanjing Arts Institute, China Kin Wai Michael Siu, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Abstract: Virtual Reality (VR) has absorbed a great deal of attention in new media research. However, it is not always welcomed, especially with respect to the odd experience of dealing with the virtual world it provides. This paper is an attempt to understand the fear of VR by taking photography as a parameter. By discussing the importance of materiality in visual communications, photographys taking process and VRs making process, and two types of realities (i.e. the indexical and the simulacral) provided by photography and VR respectively, this paper analyzes the reason for the fear that VR has aroused, and suggests a critical though tolerant attitude towards VR and photography. Keywords: Virtual Reality (VR), Photography, Fear, Image, Media

Introduction

[T]HE APPARITION OF VR is ghost-like indeed. Even the words themselves have a certain phantom quality, says Geoffrey Batchen, Virtual Realitya reality which is apparently true but not truly True, a reality which is apparently real but not really Real (Batchen, 2002, p. 237). Virtual Reality (VR) attracts so many attentions not just because it is a new form of technology which opens a new world to peoples senses, but more important, because it has great impacts on cultural levels and has aroused unsettling yet inspirational controversies. The practical application of VR is undoubtedly flourishing; however, people who are fully aware of its importance often take prudent attitudes towards VR. For example, panic, is the word Michael Heim uses to describe the first experience of facing the sudden freedom of navigating through virtual worlds in which things never thought possible come true. It is the possibility of integrating all prior media and information digitally, allowing people to shuttle back and forth between the solid physical world and the imagined virtual space that give the users an odd feeling which in his words is a feeling of everything all at once [that] suddenly grabs us (1998, p. 158). The current definitions of VR are inclined to define it as a medium or a technology which offers computer-generated simulated 3D visual environments and physical interactions; however, the cultural implications of VR are complex and multi-layered. When the virtual is frequently cited as a feature of postmodern cultures and technologically advanced societies in which so many aspects of everyday experience are technologically simulated (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly, 2009, p. 36), the implications of VR are unsettling. They are sometimes coloured by negative feelings towards being fooled by a fabricated world supported by communication and imaging technologies. This is also the nightmare scenario
The International Journal of the Image Volume 1, Number 1, 2011, http://ontheimage.com/journal/, ISSN 2152-7857
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of the perfect crime posited by Baudrillard, to whom the real is not just dead but has disappeared. In our virtual world, the question of the Real, of the referent, of the subject and its object, can no longer even be posed. (Baudrillard, 2000, pp. 61-62) Put such extreme views aside, it is important to realize that VR is not a technological imposition but an active and inevitable choice made by contemporary society. However, it is also true that the suspicions and disputes over its cultural implications and future potentials continue unabated. Consequently, what has happened to peoples negative attitude towards VR that they describe it as ghost-like, or blame it as the murder of the real? This paper takes an old but still common and omnipresent media todayphotographyas a framework in which to understand this seemingly new emerging question, which actually has a close relationship with the cultural implications of photography. The history of photography makes clear that photography and todays VR have a distinct kinship: Louis Daguerre, the pioneer of photography, was fascinated by creating three-dimensional theatre effects and panoramas before he shifted interest to photography. Photorealistic effects and fantasy panoramas have a history long before VR; moreover, the relationships between photography and VR are not simply connected at the level of the visual. The negative attitude towards VR today has close ties with cultural implications and anticipations about photography, which subtly function beneath the surface. This paper aims at understanding the fear of VR by taking a theoretical investigation of the aspects of photography that contribute to negative feelings. Photography has already been declared dead by some scholars (e.g. William J. Mitchell in his work The Reconfigured Eye), but in the mean time, photographic images are everywhere. Photographic images are integrated into almost every media production, not only at the level of visual phenomena, but also with respect to cultural implications that exist, whether we are conscious of them or not. These cultural attitudes towards VR that exist in the shadow of photography are of particular importance to our understanding of the real world an understanding which has been deeply influenced by photography.

Being Visual is not Enough

Being visual, in the sense of the ability to visualise what we have seen and observed, is important in the meaning-making process. However, it is not enough. In 1967 Guy Debord wrote: The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation (1967/2002, p. 142). This was the time when the visual media were not as advanced and powerful as they are now, when the new media technologies of VR were still in the laboratories. However, one distinctive character that Debord points out is that the socio-culture concentration on visuality had already come to the surface. Baudrillard (1968/1988) took a similar point of view in The System of Objects. He argued that consumption and relationship in our contemporary society have moved from materiality (i.e. the objects) to the recognition and exchange of signs. By developing various values in visual signs, contemporary society creates new objects which only have visual forms while lacking of material forms, and new relations accordingly. Up to present, one distinct feature of VR is its immateriality. What immateriality means here is that while VR invites people to interact with, to feel, to touch, to develop, it does not allow them to hold. By hold, this paper refers to our need to sense and preserve meaning by relating it to the experience of a material form. This is inherent in human nature. A major

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source of the negative attitude towards VR comes directly from the fact that it gives us nothing to hold. We perceive VR mainly through our eyes and body movements. The validity of the information VR conveys is captured on a screen, which implies that meanings are taken at face value. Moreover (and disconcertingly), they can immediately disappear simply by turning off the power supply. This is unlike photography in that the photograph itself remains a physical object that can be held. Photography is not purely visual, even though it is mainly a visual medium. Visuality is just one part of its meaning-making process, another important part which is its materiality that it can be held. In other words, traditional photography, from the very beginning, involves making a photograph, which is an object that can preserve meanings in a material form. Though photographs are becoming more and more screen-like today, their cultural implications as objects having a material form profoundly influence the way people anticipate, experience and deal with them. Photographys cultural implications as souvenir and footprint (which Sontag describes), or monument (to which Barthes compares), or the mummy complex (which Bazin points out) all stem from its materiality, which contributes to making its meanings more certain and reliable on a psychological level. Unlike photography, VR images lack material form from their beginning (described as ghost-like by Batchen). By various kinds of simulations (such as body movements and visual effects) VR formulates and conveys meanings. Photorealistic effects contribute greatly to creating the vividly immersive experience that is the aim of virtual tours, 3D movies, games and many other activities related to VR. For example, a quotation from IMAX.com says: IMAX 3D delivers the most immersive 3D movie experience ever created, enabling images to leap off the screen and into the laps of the audience, further enhancing the feeling of being IN the movie (IMAX, 2009; emphasis in original). What this advertising emphasises is the immersive visual experience, which is mainly due to 3D photorealistic effects. This visually immersive quality provides the strategy and character of VR in its meaning-makings. However, visually immersiveno matter how vividly representeddoes not contribute enough to the meaning-making process, even though images and interactions with images are major ways that VR conveys its meanings. Both photography and VR are visual and rely heavily on their images in the meaningmaking process, but photographs are objects with a lifespan, the cultural implication of which Sontag describes as talismanic (Sontag, 1990, p. 16). In this sense, photography is more associated with souvenirs and footprints. This also implies that the meanings of a photograph can be touched, held and imbued with fetish value. In contrast, one reason VR is described as ghost-like, and which may give rise to negative feelings, is that VR shares photographic visual effects while lacking of material forms. Some people hold that the VR experience may transform the old fetishistic addiction from the object to the fetishised simulation process (see Bill Nichols 2003[1988] The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems). However, in the case of negative feelings towards the VR experience, it might be too optimistic to claim that materiality has lost its aura in the meaning-making process, even when the process is mainly visual. Considering the uses to which photography is put: while digital photographs are often used in visual presentations that exist in a state of flux, traditional hand-made photographs

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are now gaining artistic value. This nostalgic attitude towards the hand-made is not because the process is time-consuming or the product unique; rather, the underlying reason, is the inherent human desire to physically touch and materially hold, which along with seeing constitutes the full meaning of presence together. Some people, especially photographers who have an attachment to traditional photographic techniques, argue that photography is losing its material form by becoming dependent on its visual effects. Lying behind this argument is the importance of materiality in the meaningmaking process. Everything I see is in principle within my reach, at least within reach of my sight, marked on the map of I can. In The Vision Machine, Virilio (1994, p. 7) argues that the ideal representation mode which leads to the original human happiness is the actualness of seeing (i.e. touch and hold) which has a close connection with the confidence of what has been seen (i.e. images). Similarly, the fear of ghost-like VR can be understood as a tension between visuality and materiality, between the visual process and the visual objects. The desire for the materially existent objects still exerts profound influence at the psychological level throughout the meaning-making process, even though the medium itself mainly functions in the visual realm (Tupper, 2008; Turkle, 2007; 2008). And stabilizing the visual meaning in a material form is of significant importance in how the visual meaning is perceived.

Different Implications on Take and Make

Photographs are taken, even though they are actually made, while VR is not taken but made from the very start. The different cultural implications of take and make contribute to different attitudes towards photography and VR, including the uneasy feelings aroused by the latter. Take and make are the verbs which not only describe the activities of photography and VR, but are two kinds of experiencethe irreversible moment of take and the reversible process of makewhich have divergent cultural implications. Strictly speaking, all photographs are made (not to mention photographic images generated out of nothing by software). However, by taking pictures, photography is an activity which is irreversible and once-foralleven though this is actually a form of wishful thinking that has been discussed by many scholars. The disputes between take and make have always haunted photography in terms of its cultural applications and metaphors. On the one hand, for example: Batchen (2001) questioned photographys taking process by asking when a photograph was made. For him, and many scholars who share similar views, a photograph has infinite range of possible meanings and the interpretation of such meanings depends on its external context. In such views, a photograph can never be completed, since the proliferation of meaning is endless, and does not depend on the photograph itself but is externally dependent on its audiences ability to understand it differently. Therefore, a photograph is always in the status of endless making, even though its taking process has long been completed. On the other hand, even if we accept endless interpretation of its meaning, photography is still widely recognized as the art of the moment that can only be taken. The famous photo-

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grapher Cartier-Bresson once romantically concluded that the taking process of photography was the decisive moment that once you miss it, it is gone forever (Cartier-Bresson, 1957; as cited in Bernstein, 2004). From this point of view, what take means to photography is the irreversible process involved in its making. It is take that endows photography a sense of value, for the precious decisive moment (or the Kodak Moment) can only happen in the context of take, the significance of which was well defined by Bresson in his essay The Decisive Moment , which still exerts a profound influence on the cultural roles photography is playing today. It is the cultural implications of take that endow photography with the aura of authority and the photographic activity with a psychological satisfaction in that we point and shoot, thereby capturing the moment like a hunter. Contrarily, VR is, without dispute, made from the very start. Unlike photographys irreversible taking process (at least in its general sense), VR is programmable and interactive, thereby anticipating physical feedback and allowing the audience or consumer an element of power or control. Unlike photographys taking process which is unidirectional freezing the moment with a click of the shutter, in the VR world, simultaneous interactions and concentrations are intensely demanding -- more so than we might imagine from our experience with texts, even powerfully engaging ones (Nichols, 2002, p. 631). VR puts (limited) control in the audiences hands by inviting them into a flow of ongoing and developing process, even though during such interactions, people are following the mental trajectory of the designers (Manovich, 2001). VR does not have a decisive moment of taking, on the contrary, it is an ever-evolving process of making. Therefore, although photography is limited by its taking process, it also gains a permanence much like a literature. Once taken, a photograph is closed, sealing off all ambiguous information in its frozen image. This is the reason why Barthes in Camera Lucida says photography is inextricable, because the feelings triggered by photographs are so personal and intimate that they can hardly be shared. By the same token, because a photograph is rather taken than made, developing a trained sharp eye that knows how to seize the moment is the goal of many photographers, while knowing how to read a photograph as a silent text is crucial to the viewers. Unlike the relatively intimate and private attitude towards photography, VR offers a shared experience with other participants while focusing on sensory experiences. People are no longer hunters or observers of the real world as they are in photographic activity, but rather are actors and players within a virtual world. Exciting as they are, however, the interactive making process of VR, with its sense of immersion in a virtual reality, might also have sideeffects. These experiences are intensely demanding, calling for physical responses, which may shallow the imagination on a more emotional level. There is a clue to the essential difference between VR and photography in Barthess statement about how photographs touch him: Absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in silence). (1982, p. 55) However, one argues in the take vs. make debate, it is the irreversible taking process that is highly valued and the frozen moment of silence that is deeply cherished. This widely accepted view of the cultural implications of photography as the art of the moment or images that speak in silence comes from the limitations of photography. VR, on the other hand, is always in the present continuous tense of making, which requires physical involvement and concentration through its meaning-making process (experience), and which is continuously developing and unfinishing. On the other hand, photography is the past perfect 91

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tense (taken), which is often linked to relics, artefacts and literature. Because it is taken, photography refuses interaction and defers its meanings, which need to be read with a rational distance rather than felt. It is irrelevant to make good/bad moral or quasi-moral distinctions between take and make as the words relate to what is in essence a making process in both photography and VR. However, the different cultural implications of take and make result in different attitudes towards photography and VR. The irreversible taking process freezes the fleeting moment, giving photography a literature-like quality at the cost of closing the process, whereas VRs interactive making process is more technologically interesting, allowing audiences to semi-physically explore and experience. Consequently, VR offers an openness at the cost of losing the literature-like quality of a completed artefact.

Two Types of Realities: The Indexical and the Simulacral

People encounter VR simulacra that assert themselves as reality while refusing to be located other than in the screen world they inhabit. Though the definition of reality is always problematic and unsettled, both photography and VR claim to reflect or represent certain kind of realities. Yet the divergent realities provided by photography and VR respectively (i.e. an out there reality which is indexical and an in here reality which is virtual) lead to the negative feelings towards the latter. Unlike photography, which is generally regarded as a visual proof of that-which-hasbeen, representing an external reality, VR claims to create its own internal reality by computer simulation which suggests only a being here, the validity of which rests on modern technologies, and more specifically, on the computer(s) having access to the necessary power and transmission systems. The state of virtual existence provided by VR is defined as not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so in The Concise Oxford English Dictionary , while it is called a simulacrum in its literature sense, which represent nothing but itself as a sign. A simulacrum reality is both the subject and the object of itself. Like the word reality, the term simulacrum is hard to define, because its complicated philosophical backgrounds are not the main subject of this paper, and just like discussions of reality, the meaning of simulacrum is heavily dependent on ones beliefs. However, since technology simulation of VR is charged by some postmodernists as the murder of the real, which is obviously hostile, it is necessary to understand why the simulacral reality provided by VR is unpleasant. There are mainly two reasons: one comes from its photorealistic effects, the other comes from the self-reflective relationship of VR simulacra. First, as relating to VRs photorealistic effects, which are seen as having the potential to mislead, lets take a 3D computer game as an example. The recently released 3D game Real Kanojo (Real Girlfriend) (2009) again put the disputes between the virtual and the real under spotlight. This game creates an attractive virtual young girl by using motion track technology and 3D CG animation. According to its maker Illusion Soft, Real Girlfriend aims to be the most technologically advanced interactive virtual girlfriend game to date. By utilizing conventional web cams as motion detectors, the female characters in the game respond to the players movements. Some representative comments from the internet are:

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-INKling-: This is Both Hilarious and Deeply Sinister Mufujifi: I just find it really, really sad that such games exist. But the motion tracking/sensing technology being used sounds amazing. SeKToR : Dude, Id still play this ... even though I have a girlfriend ... just for the shits and giggles of the failures of humanity ... (Gamespot, 2009) From the above comments, it can clearly be seen that even facing a game, which is merely for entertainment and certainly not happening, people are still cautious about its virtual content, and blame it for being so real that it causes unpleasant feelings of being fooled. And such negative attitude of being fooled by VR is not just individual, it can be seen from many debates on VR products and their consequences. In fact, the Real Kanojo game is not new; it is just another version of The Sims (a life-simulation computer game published by Electronic Arts, Inc.). As long as technology continues to develop, VR games will become more realistic. As seen from this viewpoint, VR reality, the simualcral reality, is irritating because its effects are so perfect that they may disturb and threaten our basic and clear cut distinction about what is happening and what is not. Second, the self-reflective relationship of VR: VR creates a self-reflexive reality, which is both the subject and the object of itself, that is, VR simulation is not a window to look through, but a space to step into. Distinct from the basic distinction between reality (such as everyday routines like eating and working) and daydream, the in here reality that VR provides is still unfamiliar and strange. When everything is codified as program and exists on a visual and sensory level as an externalization of thoughts, the identity of the self becomes the identity of an avatar, and that in turn invalidates time and space. VR defenders argue that apart from VR technologies and the necessary hardware apparatus that do exist as real objects, VR simulacra do not necessarily simulate the outside world nonetheless, they have independent forms and real world consequences and follow real world rules. However, it is sometimes still confusing to ask the meaning of the assertion that VR simulacra have their own reality. What people desire from the simulacral reality provided by VR is contradictory: the desire to keep it virtual is as strong as the desire to make it actual. In other words, we are told the virtual reality is not the imitation of the actual, but rather a creation on its own, however, the virtual reality is imitating the actual in order to have a real feel. First, lets look at the virtual side. VR is designed to keep people at a distance from the real world experience so that they can immerse themselves into the virtual space where the freedom of thought is maximized. For example: as The Second Life (2009) says, Enter a world with infinite possibilities and live a life without boundaries, guided only by your imagination. Do what you love, with the people you love, from anywhere in the world. Such imaginary freedom is extremely attractive, because it is far from the reality of everyday routines, and it is the reason why VR is largely applied to entertainment. VR, the virtual reality, the simulacral reality, opens an in here reality which is boundless and only governed by thoughts. Second, lets look at the actual side, the strong attempt to realize the virtual. VRs immersion strategy is to create a sense of presence, to accomplish which it borrows photographic effects that used to be the privilege and a guaranteed reality of photography.

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By its immediate response and face-to-face encounter, VR is a being there instead of that has been or that used to be. Some VR advocators argue that, in order to create a real feel, VR images should mimic daily visual experience as close as possible; however, as its contradictory name Virtual Reality indicates, people do not want to make the virtual real (as implied by the fantastic contents of Real Girlfriend game and Second Life), in the meantime, people want to realize the virtual by adopting realistic images. What underlies the disputes around VR simulacral reality are both the innate desire for a more liberated way of imagemaking and the fear of phantoms and illusions aroused by the images. Now lets look back at the indexical reality of photography. Photography has long been struggling between two roles: as a window on the external world and as an expression of the internal minds. However, the dichotomy of roles is itself an illusion. There is no universally guaranteed reality in photography except one realitythe reality of the paper print, the material item (Tagg, 1988, p. 4). Photography was accused of creating simulacra long before the charge was laid at VRs door. The difference is that photography does not generate reality out of nowhere. It is the cultural implications of calling photography the pencil of nature, the writing of light etc., that create implications based on its indexicality, which provide a sense of certainty. Indexciality implies that everything shown in the photograph can be located elsewhere. This does not mean photography is more faithful than VR. Actually, VR simulation is technically more precise than photographic representation, while photography itself, as been pointed out by so many scholars, is inherently deceptive and misleading. However, photography without the promise of an indexical (i.e. out there) reality is literally dead, because its essential character strengthens confidence in seeing of that-has-been (Barthes, 1980/1993, p. 77). Finally, the metaphor of photographys indexical reality inevitably includes life and death. While VR, by borrowing photorealistic effect, brings a simulacral reality to which people are not yet accustomed, because it has metaphorically ruled out life and death, thus causing ontological confusions. In sum, the unsettling cultural implications of VRs simulacral reality come from the tension between its photorealistic effect, which implies an actual and indexical location, and its virtual existence, which refuses to locate in reality.

Conclusions: Photography and its Shadow

VR is the shadow of photography. Compared to photography, VR is not only a more liberated image-making approach, but also creates things by the images. The aim of this paper is to take photography as a framework for understanding the fear of VR. The paper discusses the importance of materiality in visual communications; photographys taking process and VRs making process; and two types of realities (i.e. the indexical and the simulacral) provided by photography and VR. It starts with the differences between photography and VR, and concludes with their similarities. Both photography and VR are visual communication mediums in narrowest sense. They share more similarities than differences as a consequence of the evolution and integration of digital imaging. People are now talking about VR photography, which is not a fiction but the actual and available product of digital imaging technology. For example, the newly unveiled 3D digital camera of Fujifilm claims to capture a 3D image with an unprecedented real feel by a process which is simple and automatic (Fujifilm, 2010) in just a click. The definition of photography, which used to be clear and certain, is now vague and even

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sometimes frustrating when we are trying to distinguish it from other digital images with the look of photography, because they not only look the same, but are also likely to be the same by sharing more common features. New technology is its uniform, however, ideas about photography and VR have long been overlapping each other (as pointed earlier in the paper) in history, and today the convergence of the two (i.e. VR photography) is actually a technologically advanced version of the 19th century stereoscopic photograph. Beneath, is the inherent desire to enter and inhabit into an image, which is both old and new. VR absorbs photography not only with respect to its photographic effects, but also regarding its purpose, which is to link the self with the world in a relationship between the external and the internal through images. VR exists as the other half of photography, because it stands as its opposite. VR evolved beyond photographys incompleteness that is the product of its dependence on a pre-given existence, its two-dimensional surface which is static, its taking process which is irreversible, its meaning conveying which is deferred. VR is transforming into a self-reflexive, three-dimensional, ever-growing reality, which approaches a perfect and idealistic mode of image making, freed from photographys sociocultural commitment as index. Therefore, VR is the shadow of photography, because what it has achieved is the dream that has been haunting photography for so long. Photographic image tends to be read as text rather than merely to be looked at, which leaves more space for literary imaginations. Photographs are treated as words and possessed as things, which in turn offers confidence in seeing, certainty of knowing and the satisfaction of having. Therefore, it is necessary to be critical and cautious about the virtual trend in photography, because even in a post-photography age, we long for the lost aura of photography as a confirmation that bears accountability for the solid. While VR image tends to be felt as simultaneous experience, which brings both applause and blame. Its impact far exceeds its total visibility, for it constructs a relationship between the external and the internal that refuses to fit the usual categories of human experience and the common distinction between the genuine and the forged, the existing and the imaginary, because it claims to exist as both. VR is unsettling because it arouses the uncertainty of seeing, the suspicion of knowing while realizing the daydream of a boundless freedom. Since people are asked to take an open attitude towards its intrusion into daily life as a real experience which influenced the understanding of the visual environment around, equally, the fears and controversies triggered by VR should be tolerated, because the negative attitude grows from contemporary society in which the doubts about the virtual and its cultural implications should not be neglected or degraded as nostalgic and blind. Gain and lose, confidence and uncertainty, stay in current and face the challenge, the desire to know the world is as strong as the desire to create the world. Photography, which is more associated with knowing, and VR which is involved with creating are the two stems growing from one plant that is the innate and endless eagerness to make sense of the world through visual communications.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank for the funding provided by The Hong Kong Polytechnic Universitys Joint Supervision Scheme with Mainland China, Taiwan and Macao Universities. The Central Academy of Fine Arts, in particular Professor Ping Xu, provided support to Qianhui

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Bian for her research project in Hong Kong. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

References
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About the Authors

Qianhui Bian Dr. Qianhui Bian is now working at the School of Design, Nanjing Arts Institute. During the preparation of the paper, she was a PhD candidate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Research Assistant of the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prof. Kin Wai Michael Siu Kin Wai Michael Siu is Professor of the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was Fulbright Scholar of the MIT and ASIA Fellow of the National University of Singapore. He has served the Hong Kong Government's advisory committees and professional bodies as members. His research interests are in design and culture, public design, and user-reception.

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