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      Kick-off Slides File
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      Please find here the reading list. All indicated articles are mandatory preparation for the course and we expect you to be sufficiently familiar with all the material to engage in focussed discussion. The additional material is recommended by not mandatory.

      Virtual Touch. Oslo: Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

      Suggested by Tania Chumaira

      https://virtualtouch.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/virtual-touch-stenslie-wcover.pdf

      This writing has been one of my favourite 'PhD dissertations'. The project explored a challenging topic that discusses how it is to touch and be touched in a virtual environment through several artistic installations. What caught my attention is the artist's thorough exploration in creating an installation that can interact with different modalities. Furthermore, the theoretical study was well executed too. Since the text is quite long, I propose Chapter 6 from part 1 to 6 as the reading material.


      Matthew Lombard Theresa Ditton - At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence.

      Suggested by Petri Juntunen

      While it is a bit dated on few aspects, I still find it rather useful due to multitude of references that has been incorporated in it. Link is below.

      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x


      Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3549–3557. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0138 

      Skarbez, R., Neyret, S., Brooks, F. P., Slater, M., & Whitton, M. C. (2017). A Psychophysical Experiment Regarding Components of the Plausibility Illusion. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 23(4), 1369–1378. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2017.2657158

      Suggested by Gautam Vishwanath

      This article from Slater is a very important reading that provides grounded frameworks for the design of immersive virtual reality experiences. Every VR designer should have these key concepts at their own fingertips. They include: i)immersion, ii)presence comprised of place and plausibility illusion iii)body as a receptor of immersive experiences. Based on these concepts, a designer can understand the affordances of VR as a medium as well as the limitations that could serve as constructive boundaries. An extension to these concepts is the concept of coherence from Skarbez and the article highlighting it is mentioned above.


      Terranova, Tiziana. "Soft Control." Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London ; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004. p98-112

      Suggested by Sheung Yiu

      Biocca, F. Can we resolve the book, the physical reality, and the dream state problems? From the two-pole to a three-pole model of shifts in presence. (2002).
      Suggested by Sebastian J. Schlecht
      This is a relatively raw paper on some fundamental questions of presence. I hope, it is an interesting conversation starter.


    • Additional Material

      Suggested by Tania Chumaira
      Keiichi Matsuda - Hyper Reality - " " 

      Suggested by Petri Juntunen
      I could recommend to install Acute Art application (SteamVR) and the incorporated artistic works. While AcuteART is considered to be in the forefront of exhibiting VR art, the VR works by world renowned artists (like Olafur Eliasson, Ai WeiWei, Marina Abramović, Christo etc..) showcase the current state of VR art...which some could say is imperfect, unimpressive or even painfully bad. But rather than pick on the pieces itself, a fruitful discussion could be had on why the works are as they are? Certainly technical limitations of current VR systems play its part, but one could also argue that the artists have not adapted to the new media, realised its multimodal nature. Instead they have opted for direct translations of their artistic ouvre into the VR media. This begs for a broader contemplation; what kind of artistic approach is the most "optimal", the role of single visionary artist vs. collaborative group, the nature of mutation of whatever media (music, film, sculpture) in VR and of course, the role of the spectator.

      Suggested by Gautam Vishwanath
      voicesofvr podcast: an excellent podcast to track the ongoing developments in VR, virtual communities, ethics related to surveillance technology and social media.

      Here is an episode wherein the host, Kent Bye interviews an acclaimed futurist Monika Bielskyte: https://voicesofvr.com/590-designing-the-future-through-sci-fi-world-building/

      Suggested by Sheung Yiu
      The Social Dilemma, Documentary


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      Harri's slides File
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      Two texts by Jean Baudrillard (from 1997) File
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      Maurice Blanchot: Museum Sickness File
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