Last week I played my first Virtual Reality game. It’s called The Tempest, have you tried it?
There’s this old woman, Prospera, who lives on an island and wants revenge, it seems. I was the only player on that day, so I started as myself, then became Miranda…then I think I was the bad guy at one point, and then I was back to Miranda.
The whole Virtual Reality experience left my state altered for about 18 hours after the event. And not in the same way I used to be altered by live theatre experiences back in the old days. It was overwhelming at first - I was definitely overstimulated. But it soon faded to just an occasional flash through my brain of a spinning and swirling triangular cartoon character.
Now it’s hard to remember that it even happened at all. I mean, I know that it did. I have a sense of myself standing in my living room, looking like Princess Leia in that bounty hunter get-up that time she rescued Han Solo from Jabba The Hut, and, I gather, waving my arms around and shuffling my feet *cue hysterical laughter from those watching me*.
But the memory is housed in a different part of me, because my body-brain can’t recall much of it. I have no physical reference point of walking into a theatre and sitting in my seat. My heart did not beat in tempo with fellow audience members. My breath did not sync with the players on the stage.
Back at the start of 2020 I wrote about working and learning remotely, and the past six months has taught me a little more about that. And I have a lot to say - I am a talker, after all, and when I learn a little, I talk a lot. But in that respect, I’m thinking about the benefits of online learning, and I’ll try to articulate more about that later. Tomorrow. Because today I’m thinking about what happens when mind and body are separated. What happens when the head brain is receiving all the information and stimuli? The body brain is relegated to responding to, and adapting to, the unusual weight of machinery and electricity putting pressure on the cranium. Huh. What heavy issues must be virtually grappled with up there…
I’ve just now realized that in the Tempest game, I saw no Caliban. Where was that character? Was it too hard to integrate the data for a figure who embodies connection to the land? Too hard to find a digital role for a physical sense of place?
No wonder those VR figures have large heads covered by powerful, magical masks. Heads which lead the movements, and drive the figures endlessly forward, onward, through virtual space, as their light bodies float behind.